longitudinal ambulatory experience

[Gleevec]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Has anyone been a part of a longitudinal ambulatory experience? What does entail and what did you think of it? Thanks

 

[ckent]

My school has a longitudinal ambulatory requirement for graduation. It basically entails taking off one afternoon every other week to drive off to some off campus site to work with either a family doc, internist or pediatrician. Supposedly, it is supposed to allow us to have continuity of care, but it's pretty stupid because for most of the sites (particularly those who work with private docs), they don't ask pts to only come back on those days that we will be there. So I think that it is a waste of time for most students. Some students actually go to sites where they have they see the same group of pts whenever they are there and follow their care throughout the year, and that would be interesting. I am looking forward to having it during my surgery rotation though. Anything that gets me out of the OR will be a good thing.

 

[hotbovie]

My class was the first to have a program where we were assigned to various offices during the first two years. The idea was that, after each exam block, we would learn the physcial exam skills for a particular system, then go practice it with our preceptor for the week. It turned out to be a huge joke. About 60% of the class was only allowed to shadow the physician. We were supposed to be with primary care dos, but there werent enough to take all of us, so some were with allergists, oncologists, cardiologist, etc. These docs have estabilshed pts that they know well, and aren't about to let some medical student practice, say the neruo exam on a allergy patient! Some students in those situations were allowed to do some things (maybe listen to murmurs for example).

Bottom line... that was a waste of time. We learned the physical exam skills on each other instead and passed the physical exam test (so the faculty thinks the program was a smashing success).