Inpatient/Outpatient US Clinical Experience in Family Medicine in Miami

Information about this clinical experience:

This rotation split between the inpatient and outpatient settings will be under the supervision of a board-certified family medicine physician with years of experience educating international medical students and graduates. The physician holds hospital appointments at multiple institutions, including hospitals within the HCA and Jackson Health Systems.

Your day will start at 8:30 AM in the physician’s office where you will meet with the attending to see scheduled patients. Please note that this physician has two offices with patients seen at both locations on most days of the week. At approximately 2:30 PM, you will attend hospital rounds at one or more hospitals. There may be opportunities to visit nursing homes and hospice centers, depending upon whether patients are being cared for in these facilities.

In the clinic, you will see patients with both acute complaints and chronic disease. You will learn how to evaluate these patients through focused history-taking and examination and synthesize the data to form an assessment and plan. During discussions with the attending, important teaching points related to these cases will be shared with you. There will also be an emphasis on ensuring patients are current with age-appropriate health screening.

Time spent in the hospital will make you more aware of how family medicine physicians can remain involved in the care of their patients across different settings. With more and more primary care physicians giving up their inpatient practice to hospitalists, care can become fragmented. In addition, some patients may be dissatisfied when their personal physicians are not involved during their hospitalization. In this rotation, because the preceptor will see patients in both the hospital and clinic, you will have the opportunity to observe how hospitalized patients respond when seen by their own personal physician in the hospital.

During your experience, you will learn the following U.S. medical practices under the preceptor’s supervision:

• Taking patient histories under supervision.

• Performing exams under the physician's supervision.

• Presenting patients.

• Writing or entering notes in the EMR (Care Tracker EMR)

• Researching the literature to answer clinical questions at the point of care.

• Educating patients under supervision.

• Spending time with other healthcare professionals to understand their roles and responsibilities.