Rotation

Thank you for your interest in our Preventive Medicine/Public Health Rotation. We hope the following will answer most of your questions regarding the rotation. If you have any more questions, you can contact Jennifer Popowski at (203) 732-7327 or at jpopowski@griffinhealth.org.

Basic Design - Goals

Our rotation is designed to provide preventive medicine experience to medical students and demonstrate how preventive medicine can be integrated in clinical care. It utilizes the strengths of an existing active preventive medicine department to involve medical students in ongoing projects in the areas of general preventive medicine, women's health, caring for the underserved, health and human rights, and quality improvement (QI).

Students pick one of three areas of focus (general PM, QI, community and women's health). Depending on their focus area, they will pick different projects and have different main supervisors.

Curriculum

A basic curriculum has been designed that students are expected to complete within the rotation. Topics include basic of statistics, epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and quality improvement.

Timeline, Housing, Workspace

The rotation is expected to be 4-8 weeks long. Housing will not be provided. A scholarship of $500/month will be provided to supplement room and board. Workspace with computers and internet access are provided in the DeLuca learning Center.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this rotation, medical students will:

Understand basic principles of statistics, epidemiology, evidence-based medicine, and quality improvement (QI)
Understand when and why to apply biostatistical tests to health care research or QI-initiatives.
Understand how nutrition and exercise may be used to reduce the risk of chronic disease in patient and populations
Understand the principles of health communication
Demonstrate ability to use libraries and the internet to retrieve, assess, assimilate, and summarize relevant medical literature and published materials
Understand how to work effectively within the current system of health care
Demonstrate the ability to deliver quality clinical preventive services to patients, based on accepted national standards.

Possible Supervisors

Dr. Nawaz MD MPH: Works on counseling rates for obesity, smoking, vaccination in inpatients; effects of nutritional counseling. Director of research at women's health center.

Dr. Wild MD MPH: Works on medical errors, cost-effectiveness analysis, medical errors, quality improvement, health care policy

Dr. Ahmadi MD MPH: Director of women's health center. Works on women's health, access to care, health and human rights.

Student Project

Each student is expected to work on a project during the rotation. This project may be a QI-project, a research project, or a community health project. Given the short timeline, it is not expected that students will complete a whole project, but they are expected to complete one defined step (e.g. the literature search, identification of a community health problem, evaluation of a QI problem) and design an intervention to address the next stage (e.g. a research hypothesis, intervention to address community health problem, intervention to improve QI).

Learning activities (see schedule)

Participate in existing activities

PM conferences
Teaching rounds Dr. Wild and Dr. Nawaz on inpatient service
Morning report Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
Continuity clinic of PM residents on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon
Infection control
Clinical pathway committee

Intro to QI

1:1 intro to chart abstraction tools, feedback to initial chart abstraction
CMS and JCAHO quality standards
Intro to clinical pathways

Self-directed learning

Reader available for self-directed learning of curriculum
Chart-abstraction

Partially independent work with 1:1 feedback

Litsearch, analysis, and write-up. Detailed feedback from faculty supervisor.

Supervised clinical encounters for general preventive medicine

Counseling of individual patients under supervision of senior residents or faculty.