Evaluating students on an interdisciplinary primary care clerkship at the Pennsylvania state university college of medicine

With funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Generalist Physician Initiative, the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine created a community-based primary care clerkship in general pediatrics, general internal medicine, and family and community medicine, in which third- year students spend a month in a small town, rural area, or urban underserved medical community. In addition to linking students with preceptors who would teach the clinical skills essential to primary care practice, the medical School set out to teach and to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors unique to primary care. This paper describes the three-part teaching tool/evaluation developed to address (1) a student' recognition of the characteristics of primary care (learning objectives assignment), (2) a student's ability to appreciate the multiple nonmedical factors influencing a patient's health and experience of illness (family project), and (3) a student's ability to solve clinical problems (clinical reasoning examination). The authors describe how these evaluation methods are linked with the clerkship's goals and objectives and how they yield a richer portrait of the student's performance than the traditional preceptor's evaluation alone can provide. They also discuss the relationship between students' performances on the primary care clerkship and their performances in other clinical clerkships. Similar clinical experiences in primary care should focus on features unique to primary care medicine in both teaching and evaluation.