I know I wasn't the one to post about it, but I'm curious about what kinds of hands-on learning/clinical experience students have in their first two years, aside from the Magis Clinic.
There are a few different things.
As you said, Magis Clinic is a big one, but there are other clinics available that are similar, serving the underprivileged communities around Omaha. There are a ton of different opportunities available, depending on what you are interested in. A few that I can think of are psychiatric clinic, a few refugee clinics, a few homeless clinics, spanish speaking things, women's health, one where you go help out in a prison, and I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other important things, this is just what I can think of off the top of my head at this moment. All of this is completely voluntary, and most things you can begin right away in first year.
Throughout the first two years, there are classes on learning the clinical skills you need to know to practice medicine. This includes interviewing skills and physical exam type skills, in lecture format as well as actual hands-on practice sessions. For interviewing, you will practice on a bunch of standardized patients in all sorts of different hypothetical scenarios. For physical exam skills, you will practice on standardized patients, and there is a thing where every once in a while you will practice on each other with the M4's helping you out (a fun, low pressure environment, which is also nice because it is much easier to ask all of your dumb questions to another student who isn't in charge of grading you). You will have a few graded exams per year where you will interview a standardized patient and perform a physical exam on them, similar to what you'll do for Step 2, and then get feedback from the patient and a physician that was watching on camera.
Finally, in second year, we get paired up with a local primary care doctor, and you go to clinic once every two weeks for the entire year. This is a pretty cool experience because you get to practice all of the things that you'll be doing in third year, and you get to practice on actual patients, which I have surprisingly found to be easier than the standardized patients. You get to interview, do the physical exam, write actual notes that go into the system, talk about diagnosis and treatment options with the doctor, etc. You get to know your doctor over time, and you get a lot of one-on-one instruction any time you ask which is awesome.
I know that I am missing a ton of other things, but I already wrote more than anyone wants to read. In short, we learn pretty much all of the basics at some point, and there are plenty of opportunities to actually go work on these skills. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
