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Students apply what they learned in the first year of medical school to provide care during clinical clerkships in year two. Rotating through six core clerkships in different clinical specialties over the course of a year, physicians in training build upon their scientific understanding and clinical skills while working through real cases with real people. The range of experiences during clerkships — from training under respected clinicians to connecting with patients — reinforces foundational skills while shedding light on areas of growth. Longitudinal courses in Developing Outstanding Clinical Skills, Interprofessional Education and Leadership continue.

Between years two and three, Dell Med students take the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1. Research suggests that students score higher on the exam if they have significant clinical experiences, one of the benefits of Dell Med’s accelerated curriculum.

Clerkship

The Primary Care, Family and Community Medicine Clerkship takes place across the student’s second and third years of medical school. Students provide patient-centered medical care to people of all ages in a primary care setting, develop long-term therapeutic relationships with patients, gain understanding of the value of continuity in medical care, and recognize and act on the systems influencing both the health and successful treatment of patients. The clerkship involves outpatient clinical experiences with an instructor, community engagement activities and learning activities in classroom and community settings.

The Emergency Medicine Clerkship is a four-week rotation designed to give students exposure to the core principles of emergency medicine. The primary locations of the clerkship are Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin and Dell Seton Medical Center. As part of the rotation, students learn to evaluate the undifferentiated patient, evaluate and stabilize the acutely ill patient, evaluate and stabilize traumatic injuries, identify and interpret abnormal vitals and apply tenets of basic and advanced life support.

The Internal Medicine Clerkship provides students with expertise in treating adult patients with a broad spectrum of medical conditions. Each student spends eight weeks at Dell Seton Medical Center on inpatient service. The goal of the clerkship is to teach students to develop the knowledge, skills and professionalism necessary to treat a variety of patients using physical diagnosis, laboratory evaluation and differential diagnosis. Learning occurs during rounds, at the bedside and in weekly didactics.

This Neurology/Psychiatry Clerkship includes eight weeks of rotating at inpatient and outpatient sites that address patient populations with overlapping psychiatric and neurologic symptoms. Student learning is focused on multidisciplinary care, patient advocacy, mindfulness of medical ethics and management of acute and chronic pain as it pertains to psychiatry, neurology and rehabilitative medicine.

The Pediatrics Clerkship cultivates the skills required to provide medical care for infants, children and adolescents related to normal growth and development as well as injury and disease. The eight-week rotation is divided into four weeks on the inpatient service at Dell Children’s Medical Center, two weeks at an outpatient clinic, one week divided between urgent care and a pediatric sub-specialty, and one week in the newborn nursery at Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin. In addition to basic medical care, the clerkship also emphasizes the student’s role in the prevention of disease and injury and as a child advocate.

In the Surgery Clerkship, students attain the knowledge and clinical skills necessary for the successful diagnosis, evaluation and management of commonly encountered surgical conditions. Students provide care for patients from presentation all the way to post-operative care. Each student spends four weeks on acute-care general surgery at Dell Seton Medical Center. This inpatient rotation offers learning experiences in vascular surgery, the surgical intensive care unit, trauma and emergency general surgery. Students then spend four weeks on a sub-specialty of their choice, either pediatric surgery, elective general surgery or surgical oncology.

The Women’s Health Clerkship provides an in-depth, hands-on experience for developing technical skills and learning about areas specific to the care of women. By caring for women in both hospital and clinic-based settings, students gain an appreciation of the extent to which medical care, obstetrical care, gynecologic care, surgical care and preventive care must be combined to provide comprehensive women’s health care. A unique aspect of this clerkship is the breadth of experiences that the students receive across the eight-week rotation including gynecologic surgery, labor and delivery, high-risk obstetrics, gynecologic oncology and urogynecology.