Wednesday Evening Clinic

From ScribbleWiki: MD PhD Advice

The Wednesday Evening Clinic is a wonderful MD PhD tradition at Yale. Check out this article on it:

http://yalemedicine.yale.edu/ym_sp01/clinic/clinic1.html

It fulfills your primary care or ambulatory clerkship requirement. Currently the requirement is that you have to attend at least ~40 clinics over 1 year to meet the requirement. That being said, the longer you stay in clinic, the more you'll get out of it - it takes about 3 months to figure out what you're doing, and 6-9 months to feel moderately comfortable.

Typically, you show up Wednedsay evenings at the PCC at 5:00 PM. There is a brief lecture by a student on a primary care topic, and dinner, brought by one of the students. Your first patient is scheduled at 6. You see 2-4 patients until 8, write notes, and the follow up on labs, appts, etc. You won't really get to know your patient population until 6-8 months (until they've been back for several visits), which will make things easier.

This is a ton of work. Infrastructure at the PCC is difficult, and the attendings are there are consultants; but if something is to be done, you have to follow it up (i.e., call doctors offices, follow up on labs, etc.) It's a wonderful model of primary care, which is a lot of work. Start out seeing 2 patients, and then move up when you feel comfortable.