Fourth-Year Electives

AI in Family Medicine

This four-week clerkship for fourth-year students focuses on comprehensive inpatient care. The student will function as a full team member with residents and faculty, assuming primary inpatient responsibility for his/her panel of patients. The student will attend daily tutorials and conferences with Family and Community Medicine faculty as scheduled with the inpatient team.

Preceptorship in Family Medicine

This course is available to seniors to help them fulfill their off-site AHEC rotation. Students are placed with community family medicine physicians in their private offices, both rural and urban-based.

Four-week rotations are available year-round which offer outpatient care and inpatient ward experience through one-to-one instruction.

Students are required to present specific cases to preceptors and clinical staff they interact with during the month, and conduct independent study of literature reviews as necessary.

Research Elective

This fourth-year elective is available to all medical students with an interest in clinical, practice based or health services research.

Students MUST contact the research division director a minimum of three months prior to their planned elective month in order to complete online human subjects and research ethics training prior to the start of the elective.

Palliative Care Elective

Palliative and hospice care focuses on quality of life for patients with life-threatening illnesses and their families. There are two spots available most months – one with an adult palliative care team, one with a children’s palliative care team. Relevant medical, legal, ethical, cultural, spiritual and psychological topics will be address through interdisciplinary experiences.

Global Health Elective

The Global Health course gives fourth year medical students intensive training in practical primary care delivery in low resource settings. It is a four week elective (or ICE) with didactic time in Cincinnati, and then field work in an underserved international setting.

Students are prepared for field work with one week of didactics in tropical medicine, cross cultural medicine, global health ethics, community and population health, as well as the determinants of health. The course is led by a team of multi-disciplinary faculty from across the medical center and community.

The off-site component involves providing patient care in underserved areas, interpreting clinical data, and participating in a variety of public health projects.

Patients with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

This course introduces medical students to primary care, including psychiatric care, for patients with a variety of developmental and intellectual disabilities in the outpatient setting. Because we cannot control the schedule, the student will be seeing a mix of patients with and without disabilities. We will try our best to maximize their exposure to patients with disabilities, but they will likely also be doing some general family medicine during their time with us.Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to provide direct medical care as well as participate in off-site experiences including visiting group homes and workshops, attending specialty medical and psychiatric clinics, etc. Directed self-study about specific disabilities of the student's choosing is also an integral part of the course.

Homeless Health

Fourth year students may arrange this two week elective to work with the programs that provide healthcare to the homeless population in Greater Cincinnati. Over the two weeks, students will work with medical, behavioral health, dental, respite and advocacy programs. A reading module will be provided and students will identify learning objectives for the rotation. Both of these will be discussed with faculty at a weekly journal club.