The Family Medicine 360° is an opportunity for fourth year medical students to delve into the many roles of a family doctor.  This elective is designed for medical students strongly considering a career in Family Medicine who would like additional exposure to outpatient, inpatient, maternal child health and specialty care provided by family doctors. The elective experience will take place at Boston Medical Center, at Family Medicine affiliated community health centers, and at the Ryan Center (Sports Medicine). The student will have a clinical home throughout their rotation at a community health center. Each student will be paired with a resident, and will participate in that resident’s continuity clinic 2 sessions/week on their inpatient and mom-baby weeks and 5 sessions/week on the outpatient week. These supervising residents will receive Resident as Teacher training and will get teaching support and mentoring during the rotation from Dr. Cohen-Osher. The student will see a subset of patients on the resident’s schedule. The clinical care provided by the student-resident pair will be supervised by the attending physician who is precepting in resident clinic. The student will also work with additional clinicians at the community health center to understand the comprehensive services available for the care of patients such as integrated behavioral health and nutrition counseling. The inpatient experience during the elective will include 2 weeks on the Family Medicine inpatient service caring for hospitalized adults. During the week of nights, the student will work directly with the Family Medicine intern and attending physician to admit new patients and cross-cover patients on the Family Medicine resident teams. During the week of days, the student will follow their own assigned patients with supervision from the resident team and attending physician. The maternal child health week gives students a true Family Medicine-centered experience to include prenatal/perinatal care (including labor and delivery), inpatient postpartum care for women, as well as newborn nursery care for their infants. The student will spend mornings on the postpartum floor caring for women and their infants- focusing on issues such as breastfeeding (including spending time with a lactation consultants), the newborn exam, routine postpartum care, maternal counseling and anticipatory guidance. During the outpatient/specialties week the student will have an opportunity to tailor their clinical experiences to their individual interests. All students will have the opportunity to spend clinical time with the Sports Medicine fellowship trained Family Medicine faculty and fellows. Students will also be able to experience other areas of focus in Family Medicine such as integrative medicine, transitions of care, office based substance use treatment, geriatrics, and student health and these will be tailored (as much as possible) to the student’s clinical interests. Inter-professional experiences are built-in to many components of this elective. On the inpatient Family Medicine service there are board rounds twice daily where the MD team, nurses, and case management come together to discuss all patients. During the maternal child health week, there is daily communication with nursing and often with lactation consultants and social workers. Our outpatient clinics have team care nursing and integrated behavioral health. During the four-week rotation the student will select a topic of interest relevant to Family Medicine and prepare an oral presentation to be shared with Family Medicine residents and faculty which will be evaluated by the presentation coordinator. This will happen in the 3rd or 4th week of the clerkship.

Note that this information may change at any time. Please visit the MyBU Student Portal for the most up-to-date course information.