Longitudinal Clinical Experience

The Longitudinal Clinical Experience (LCE) is a 12-month experience (three semesters) in which students work with a continuity primary care physician preceptor in the University of Utah Health Care Community Clinics.

Students begin performing basic experiential roles such as greeting and rooming patients, collecting historical data, conducting vital signs and scribing for physicians. Students continue these roles while acumulating additional physician-specific roles throughout the experience, including selecting and conducting elements of the physical exam pertinent to a patient’s complaint, educating patients, and developing basic differential diagnoses. Students also spend one half-day every other week with their LCE preceptor. Classroom experiences complement the clinical experience.

Objectives for the program include:

1. Patient Care: Provide patient care that is compassionate, appropriate and effective for the treatment of health problems and the promotion of health
2. Medical Knowledge: Demonstrate medical knowledge about established and evolving biomedical, clinical and cognate (e.g. epidemiological and social-behavioral) sciences and the application of this knowledge to patient care
3. Professionalism: Demonstrate a commitment to professionalism in carrying out professional responsibilities, adherence to ethical principles and sensitivity to a diverse patient populations
4. Systems-Based Practice: Demonstrate knowledge of systems-based practice, i.e. responsiveness to the larger context and system of healthcare and the ability to effectively call on system resources to provide care that is of optimal value
5. Interpersonal and Communication Skills: Exhibit interpersonal and communication skills that promote effective and culturally responsive information exchange and result in team-based patient care which includes patients, families, and professional associates
6. Practice-Based Learning: Demonstrate a basic approach to practice-based learning through practical exposure to and graduated responsibility within a longitudinal clinical experience
7. Self-Assessment: Consciously practice continuous self-assessment that identifies individual strengths and weaknesses and optimizes patient care through more efficient and effective individual and team performance.

This program utilizes Clinical Evaluation Exercises (CEX) to evaluate clinical competence; students also complete semester self-evaluations and reviews with their preceptors.