PROFESSIONAL ISSUES

Harvard med students to follow patient progress

Harvard Medical School has introduced a program designed to help third-year rotation students focus on patient care from diagnosis to recovery.

By Jessica M. Diehl, AMNews staff. Jan. 24, 2005.

Harvard Medical School is making changes to the way some students learn patient care with a new third-year rotation program designed to focus on patients and their range of care over time.

As of July 2004, eight third-year medical students were introduced to an experimental program that seeks to update the centuries-old way of training medical students.

In the average third-year rotation system, students spend most of their time in a largely inpatient setting, moving after several weeks to another area of the hospital. But students involved in Harvard's integrated clerkship program are able to explore the impact of an illness at diagnosis and throughout treatment in both the inpatient and outpatient settings with the same patient.

"The program is working wonderfully. It has been very successful at the core aspects we had envisioned as most important," said Barbara Ogur MD, director of the program. "Students follow patients longitudinally, pursuing an understanding of an illness."

Through a carefully orchestrated system, students are notified and assigned patients who come to the emergency department with various symptoms that suggest an educational experience. The student then follows that patient through testing, additional visits and any outpatient appointments with specialists.

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