Preceptors generally will have a student with them 3-4 half-days per week for the 8-week clerkship. The preceptor's role is to supervise the student in their development of skills in patient interviewing, physical exam, presentation and use of the medical literature. In the M3 year, the students' focus should be on diagnosis

Initially, you should orient the student to the office and introduce him/her to your staff, discuss your practice and practice style, and review your expectations. You may want the student to simply shadow you the first session to get a better feel for this. See Week 0 email below for more information.

Typically, the student should arrive before the clinic session to review the upcoming patients and be alerted to particular learning opportunities. It is important that the students have opportunities to interview/examine some patients by themselves and present their findings to you, and be able to explore an assessment and plan. Generally it works best to pick out about 3 patients/half-day for the students to see and spend more time with than trying to have them see everyone. See Week 1 email below for tips on the 1-Minute teaching strategy.

Students love to use their hands. In addition to teaching physical exam skills (see week 2 email) and office procedures, students also can learn from and assist your staff to take blood pressures, perform hearing and vision screening, give shots, do EKGs and other activities. What is commonplace to us is new and exciting for our students. See Week 5 email for more suggestions.

Giving feedback is one of the more challenging aspects of being a preceptor, and is the one thing that students most often say we could do better. See Week 3 email for a useful format. Half-way through the clerkship, your student should ask for your formal opinion on how she/he is doing via the Mid-rotation Feedback Form. (pdf)

Practicing life-long learning skills is a goal of the clerkship. In addition to role-modeling how you keep up on new developments, we would like the students to enhance skills in asking clinical questions and searching medical literature. This is also a great way for you to keep learning and to provide up-to-date care for your patients. See week 6 email for ideas on how to incorporate.

We do have to give our students grades, and because the most important part of this clerkship is the time spent with you, we rely on your evaluation of the student for a significant part of their grade. We ask for an evaluation (pdf) from each preceptor who works with the student 3 or more half-days. These evaluations are then compiled and weighted to generate a clinical grade (e.g. if a student has 50 half-days with preceptors, the evaluation of a preceptor of 20 half-days would = 40% of the clinical grade, 10 half-days = 20%, etc.). The clinical grade makes up 50% of the clerkship final grade.

Most preceptors take students because of an interest in teaching and a desire to 'give back' for the training that others provided to them. But, there can be other rewards as well. See week 8 email.

Again, and most importantly, Thank You!