Family & Community Medicine

Family Medicine Clerkship

About the Family Medicine Clerkship

During this 6-week experience, students will have an opportunity to join a community-based Family Practice and to learn about primary care practice through a structured, yet “real world” clinical experience with a mentor. Students will live in the community and largely adopt their preceptor’s schedule. This clerkship offers students a unique variety of opportunities different from other third-year clerkships including:

• working one-on-one with an experienced physician mentor, typically without other students or residents.
• experience in the type of ambulatory setting where a majority of the nation's health care is delivered. Students often have the opportunity for follow-up and continuity of care with ambulatory patients over several visits, and many of these patients have years and generations of continuity relationship with the preceptor.
• the challenge of seeing presenting signs and symptoms that are often vague, undifferentiated, and early, as well as patients presenting with multiple needs.
• daily repetition in history taking, the focused physical exam, and common procedural skills.
• a rural emphasis at many sites.
• service as ambassadors, through professionalism and contributions to the host practice and community, reflecting on Tulane throughout the region.