clinical rotation

Year 2

Clinical Trunk

Patient care integrated with science.

In the Clinical Trunk, you will enter the clinical environment in your M2 year as a member of a care team, building on your skills from the Scientific Trunk.

In addition to the longitudinal elements of the Doctoring Course, Leadership and Paths of Excellence, the Clinical Trunk features:

  • Transition to Clerkships intro course
  • Patient evaluations in a variety of clinical settings
  • Multidisciplinary clinically driven learning
  • Immersion in department-based clinical care teams on core clinical rotations
  • Science in the Clinical Context

Everything does not have a right or wrong answer, that's the reality of medicine. The ability to tolerate uncertainty and change, demonstrate flexibility and self-motivation, and take ownership for your learning is important. We want students who are motivated and not content with the status quo. We seek people who are willing to start with a framework, identify their own needs and utilize the resources available to them to keep building on it. Our curriculum promotes those skills.

Michelle M. Daniel, MD, Assistant Dean for Curriculum and Clinical Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine
Medical student with clipboard

The Clinical Trunk comprises two distinct phases:

Transition to Clerkships: Building on your Interprofessional Clinical Experience, Interprofessional Education, Scientific Trunk sequences, Chief Concern and Doctoring courses, you will learn how to function in the clinic. This four-week introductory course focuses on:

  • Health care team function
  • Clinical problem solving with patients
  • Integrated science learning with patient interactions
  • Directed teaching and feedback from Doctoring faculty built around clinical skills

Clerkships: In this phase, you will enter into departmentally organized clinical rotations. You will rotate in your departmental teams in three-week blocks, fully prepared with a robust skill set and ready to hit the ground running. The focus is on:

  • Immersion into care teams
  • Skills of patient care and management
  • Pre-Branch exploration

These core clerkships cover the following departments:

  • Family Medicine
  • Internal Medicine
  • Neurology
  • OB-GYN
  • Pediatrics
  • Psychiatry
  • Surgery and Applied Sciences (a combination of Surgery, Pathology, Anesthesiology, Anatomy and Radiology)

The Step I exam is taken after the entire Clinical Trunk is complete. The Clinical Trunk naturally segues into the Branches phase of the curriculum with the continuity of clinical rotations integrated with scientific learning.

At a Glance

Please note, these diagrams are provided for reference only. Curriculum details are subject to change. Updated July 2017.