Medical Student Clerkships

Our Graduate Medical Education Program has a strong commitment to medical student teaching. Eisenhower Medical Center routinely hosts medical students from the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Loma Linda University School of Medicine where we have affiliation agreements established.

Third and Fourth Year medical students rotate each month through Eisenhower clerkships. We welcome fourth year medical students for their medicine sub-internship rotations.

The clerkship rotations that are currently available are:

Family Medicine: Explore our personalized patient-centered medical home practice in La Quinta, CA., our two- to four-week clerkship in an ambulatory, state-of-the-art facility. Work with nationally recognized faculty in Family Medicine.

Cardiology: Work with world-class cardiologists and learn the basics of clinical cardiology by participating in new cardiology consultations in the hospital and office, follow-up of continuity patients, and attending teaching rounds and other didactic sessions. Students will receive training in four cardiology subspecialties: preventive cardiology, cardiac imaging, procedures and electrophysiology.

Geriatric Medicine: This two- to four-week clerkship is designed to provide the medical student with an in-depth exposure to high-quality care for the elderly population. The rotation focuses on evaluation and management of the medical and psychosocial aspect of aging. It exposes the student to rehabilitation, chronic care, and ambulatory clinic, as well as inpatient consultations and hospice care.

HIV Primary Care: This two to four-week clerkship is designed to provide an in-depth exposure to primary care of the HIV adult patient in an outpatient setting. Students will precept with physicians in appointment-based practices, as well as affiliated sites including community clinics and a farm worker clinic in Mecca, CA.

Hospitalist Medicine: This two to four-week clerkship is designed to provide an in-depth exposure to high quality care in the inpatient setting. The rotation focuses on evaluation and management of common hospital based internal medicine pathology and inpatient medical consultations on surgical patients, clinical case conferences and a Journal Club as time allows. This course exposes the student to code blues and rapid response teams as well.

Nephrology - This four-week clerkship is designed to provide an in-depth exposure to general nephrology with a focus on evaluation and management of in-patient nephrology care and ambulatory nephrology care with an emphasis on chronic kidney disease. Students will also have the opportunity for exposure to aspects of renal transplantation and procedures.

Medical Informatics: This two to four-week clerkship is designed to provide an exposure to state-of-the-art Medical Informatics. The student will learn the basics of a comprehensive enterprise system and how this impacts workflow and patient care. The student will learn how Health Information Technology can be leveraged to improve patient outcomes and assist caregivers in the provision of evidence based, cost effective care to patients. In 2003, high-tech electronic information systems were implemented throughout the hospital including a fully integrated appointment scheduling, admission, registration, discharge and transfer system; patient accounting and medical records management.

Ambulatory Internal Medicine: The goal of this elective clerkship is to enable the medical student to gain competence providing comprehensive medical care for patients as well as coordination of care in a medical home environment. Students will improve their skills as effective communicators with patients and their families and learn to advocate on behalf of patients to address the psychological, social and economic determinants of health. The rotation will be taught in practice environments that have the student in direct patient contact. The rotation will advance the knowledge, skill and ability that form the basis of an exciting career in internal medicine. The focus on the medical knowledge required for ambulatory based medical care and the professionalism needed to be successful is the skill set we are committed to teaching students who elect this rotation.

The first day of the rotation is an orientation day. Medical students are given a thorough orientation to Eisenhower Medical Center, EHR access, drug/urine test, discuss the rotation schedule, and suggested reading topics are given.

Housing:
Turnkey furnished two-bedroom condominiums are provided free of charge for medical students conducting their clerkships while at Eisenhower Medical Center. These condominiums are located within private, guard-gated country clubs.

Locations:
Our clerkships are all located in the Coachella Valley. Depending upon the clerkship, some travel is required daily. Clerkships that are conducted on the EMC campus are Cardiology, Hospitalist Medicine, and Medical Informatics. The clerkships that enjoy traveling from EMC clinics, underserved clinics, or skilled nursing facilities are Family Medicine, Geriatric Medicine, and HIV Primary Care Medicine.