Extenuating circumstances. Student selection of case presentations for a required rural family medicine clerkship.

PURPOSE

The Fourth Year Rural Family Medicine Clerkship has been a required four-week clinical rotation at the Sanford School of Medicine of the University of South Dakota (SSOM) for more than 30 years. Among the clerkship requirements has been a graded, formal case presentation. The purpose of this study was to examine the case presentations selected by the medical students for this required component of the clerkship and to determine if this correlated with their overall clinical experiences.

METHODS

Clinical diagnoses of patients selected by all students for their formal case presentations were recorded and compared with the overall clinical experiences as documented using the Student Patient Experience Log database. The frequency of multiple diagnosis cases was also determined.

RESULTS

Although the large majority of clinical experiences occur in ambulatory settings during this clerkship, findings suggest students have a preference for presenting on patients who were hospitalized. This does not, however, indicate that students wish to necessarily present more complicated cases. In fact, the percentage of patients selected who had multiple diagnoses was much lower compared with their overall clinical experiences.

CONCLUSIONS

The variety of clinical cases selected for presentation is different than the variety of overall clinical experiences. This suggests that some selection criteria are being used by students.