Clinical Clerkship

We approach the development of each clerkship individually with each student. 

We find out what is the student's area of interest and then try to find an clinical experience in that area.  If we can match them up with a physician-scientist (MD-PhD) we try to do that. This is not always possible, but all physicians will be knowledgeable about the research efforts in their field, even if they personally don't do research. There are also many clinical and research conferences that students can attend in the field of interest. 

Penn has an enormous number of clinical centers and extensive clinical expertise among its faculty. It has not been difficult to find a clerkship match for each of our students. 

The amount of time spent in the clerkship is roughly 7 full days of time - but it is split up in different ways, depending on the clerkship.

Some will be 7 individual full days.
Some will be 14 half days
Some will be a combination of half and full days.

There is not a firm set amount of time -  We suggest students do the clerkship in the summer between first and second year, as we are finding that the clerkship experience may affect the students' choice of project or their focus in their research project. 

Here are some examples of clinical rotations students have already done. 

1.  A student studying herpes viruses rotated with an Infectious Disease physician who cares for AIDS patients. She saw many types of viral illnesses and had the opportunity to discuss them with her preceptor. 

2.  A student studying developmental neurobiology shadowed a pediatric neurologist and was able to see many types of developmental problems. 

3.  2 students studying neurodegenerative diseases shadowed neurologists caring for patients with Alzheimers' disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. 

4.  A student studying the neurobiology of olfaction saw patients at the Center for Taste and Smell at Penn and got to see how the patients were tested for problems of taste and smell, and how they presented clinically. 

5.  A student in the vaccine program spent time with a pharmaceutical company learning about vaccine development. 

In addition, I set up other clinical experiences as needed. For example - all students are invited to come attend an autopsy and /or see patientspecimens with diseases in their area of interest.  Also, I arranged for an introduction to radiology for the students this year. Based on the areas of interest, different types of extra clinical event can be done