Phase 2: Clinical Clerkships
Phase 2 is the moment students step fully into supervised clinical practice - building confidence, clinical reasoning, and professional identity through immersive clerkships supported by four integrated two-week intersessions. Students learn to provide value-added care, apply foundational science at the bedside, and function effectively within teams and healthcare systems as their responsibilities increase.
Clerkship Dyads
Students complete four dyads, each pairing two core disciplines to create integrated, longitudinal learning. A typical example (sequence varies by student preference) includes:
- Family Medicine (4 weeks) + Surgery (6 weeks)
- Internal Medicine (8 weeks) + Neurology (2 weeks)
- Pediatrics (5 weeks) + Psychiatry (5 weeks)
- Obstetrics & Gynecology (6 weeks) + Research (4 weeks)
Each clerkship provides a blend of inpatient and outpatient care, mentorship from faculty and residents, hands-on skills development, and broad exposure to patient populations and health conditions.
During this clerkship, students will engage in diverse clinical experiences within family medicine practices. The rotation emphasizes comprehensive, patient- and family-centered care across the lifespan, encompassing acute, chronic, and preventive health visits in ambulatory settings. Students will participate in geriatrics, sports medicine, and community-based primary care encounters, integrating principles of value-based care, quality improvement, and patient safety to optimize health outcomes and resource utilization. Through collaboration with interprofessional teams, students will refine communication and clinical reasoning skills, develop proficiency in common office-based procedures, and practice minimizing barriers to care by addressing social, cultural, and systemic determinants of health. By the conclusion of the clerkship, students will demonstrate systems thinking, patient advocacy, and professionalism through coordinated, ethical, and reflective practice, approaching every patient encounter with the comprehensive, continuous, and compassionate perspective that defines Family Medicine.
The Neurology clerkship is an immersive clinical experience providing students with foundational exposure to the diagnosis and management of neurological disorders across inpatient and outpatient settings. Students will apply knowledge of neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and clinical reasoning to localize neurological dysfunction, formulate management plans, and perform focused neurologic examinations and procedures under supervision. Emphasis is placed on integrating patient-centered communication, interprofessional collaboration, and systems-based principles, including patient safety, quality improvement, and health equity, to ensure comprehensive and compassionate neurologic care. Learning occurs through direct patient care, consultation experiences, and engagement with multidisciplinary teams.
In the Pediatrics clerkship, students care for infants, children, and adolescents in inpatient, outpatient, newborn, and subspecialty settings. Students learn to take age-appropriate histories, perform thorough physical exams, document growth and developmental milestones, and create differential diagnoses and management plans for common pediatric conditions. Students practice preventive care through immunizations, nutrition, anticipatory guidance, and injury prevention, and perform basic pediatric procedures under supervision. Throughout the clerkship, students strengthen communication with children and families from diverse backgrounds, practice culturally responsive care, and work effectively within interprofessional teams. Students also apply professionalism and ethical principles, and examine how social determinants, health systems, and quality improvement strategies affect child health and advocacy.
The Psychiatry clerkship provides foundational clinical experience in the evaluation and management of patients with psychiatric disorders across diverse healthcare settings. Students build upon the principles of humanism, inquiry, and professionalism established in Phase 1 coursework to develop diagnostic reasoning, communication, and patient care skills essential to psychiatric practice. Through supervised inpatient, consultation-liaison, and additional outpatient or subspecialty experiences, students apply knowledge of neurobiology, pathophysiology, and behavioral science to the assessment and treatment of individuals experiencing mental illness. Emphasis is placed on patient-centered, evidence-based care, interprofessional collaboration, reflective practice, and systems-basedapproaches to optimizing mental health outcomes and access to care.
The Surgery clerkship provides students with hands-on experience in the evaluation and management of surgical patients across inpatient and outpatient settings. Students will develop skills in focused history-taking, physical examination, and basic procedural techniques while demonstrating familiarity with common and complex surgical disorders, perioperative care,antimicrobial use, and trauma evaluation using the Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (FAST) exam. Emphasisis placed on applying foundational anatomy and pathophysiology through evidence-based and ethical clinical decision-making, communicating with empathy, respect for patient autonomy, shared decision-making, and engaging in health promotion and patient education. Students will also model professionalism, accountability, and reflective practice while collaborating effectively within interprofessional and systems-based care teams to optimize surgical patient outcomes.
During this non-clinical clerkship experience in Phase 2, students will complete four weeks of independent research.
What Students Learn in Phase 2
Students develop the habits, skills, and professional perspectives needed to contribute meaningfully to patient care.
Clinical Readiness & Patient Care
Students develop core clinical skills—patient interviewing, physical examination, diagnostic reasoning, management planning, and communication—while caring for diverse patients in inpatient and outpatient settings. They learn to connect foundational science to clinical decisions and contribute meaningfully to team-based care.
Systems Thinking & Teamwork
Through integrated learning experiences, students learn to navigate clinical systems, identify safety concerns, understand social and structural determinants of health, and use interprofessional communication strategies that support effective, equitable care.
Professional Identity Formation
Phase 2 deepens students’ development as Master Adaptive Learners, Scientist Physicians, and System Citizens. Through feedback, reflection, and progressively complex responsibilities, learners strengthen adaptive expertise, habits of inquiry, and professionalism in real clinical environments.
Integrative Intersession Learning
- Clinical skills: advanced interview, physical exam
- Diagnostic and clinical reasoning: lab interpretation, AI as co-pilot
- Radiology essentials
- Cluster-specific Value-Added Medical Education (VAME) skills
- Radiologic imaging
- Anatomy
- Clinical exam skills
- Cluster-specific VAME skills
- Pathophysiology and mechanisms of disease in context
- Hypothesis generation
- Interpretation of diagnostic testing
- Exploring differentials
- AI as co-pilot
- Cluster-specific VAME skills
- Team-based healthcare intervention informed by needs analysis
- Aligned with learner specialty interest
- Cluster-specific VAME skills
Offered as part of Phase 3 of the curriculum:
- Health Systems Science capstone
- Research
- MAL learning portfolio
- Systems Thinking
- Practical Learning for Success as a Patient-Centered Physician
Between clerkships, intersessions reinforce skills common to all specialties - clinical reasoning, communication, procedural skills, systems awareness, and reflective practice - while spiraling concepts from foundational science, HSSIP, and research into clinical application.
Intersessions are designed to:
- Strengthen skills required for value-added participation in clerkships
- Reinforce higher-order competencies such as systems thinking, reflective practice, interprofessional collaboration, and ethical reasoning
- Integrate concepts across clerkships through case-based, experiential learning
- Prepare students progressively for advanced clinical responsibilities and internship readiness