trustee initiatives

Clinical Rotations

There is growing competition for clinical clerkship resources as a result of increases in: the numbers of Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) and Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) accredited schools, medical school class sizes, and students trained in “off-shore” schools. AMSNY continues to work with the State Department of Health on the impact of offshore proprietary medical student rotations on New York State students, in an effort to ensure that New York State students receive adequate clerkship experience through clinical placements. Well-defined qualitative methods are used in the evaluation of clerkship “adequacy”, but there are no quantitative criteria to define the number of students that can be accommodated in an “adequate” clerkship experience at any single site or in any discipline. Michael Reichgott, MD, PhD, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs and Graduate Medical Education at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Chair of the AMSNY Medical Education Committee has developed a survey to define these quantitative criteria. Information is being collected from individuals identified as the Clerkship Director for the six, traditional, core-clerkship disciplines as defined by the LCME (Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, Surgery).  The results of the survey will provide quantitative and qualitative information about student rotations that will help inform policy on this issue.