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Family Medicine Electives

Family Medicine Acting Internships

The Department offers a variety of acting internships for fourth year medical students. These opportunities are primarily located at each of the three local residency training sites (UPMC McKeesport, UPMC St. Margaret, and UPMC Shadyside). In addition, through special arrangement with a number of affiliated Family Medicine residency programs, students are offered the opportunity to serve as acting interns in other institutions in Western Pennsylvania.

During the acting internships, the student is expected to function in an inpatient environment with relative independence in decision making, developing not only clinical skills, but also methods of approaching problem solving and increasing levels of leadership, critical for future professional development.

Indian Health Service

Electives in Family Medicine and Community Health are available on American Indian reservations and in Native Alaskan areas. The Indian Health Service (IHS) provides a variety of programs for third and fourth year medical students at IHS hospitals and clinics throughout the United States. Students live in government quarters and work under the supervision of United States Public Health Service physicians. Most sites offer a heavy emphasis on outpatient medicine, while providing some inpatient experience as well. Indian Health Service programs emphasize community health activities and often provide students with opportunities to make home visits with public health nurses, participate in preventive medicine programs, and/or work in remote field clinics. In general, students will need to arrange these rotations on their own. Rotations are popular and are often filled ten months in advance at some sites. Students are given considerable opportunity to manage patient care.

Community Family Medicine

This elective is intended to offer medical students the opportunity to experience Family Medicine in a community setting which is realistic to how physicians practice. The students focus on developing skills necessary to evaluate and treat patients in a community office setting. The degree of responsibility is determined by the knowledge and skills of the student. The students are exposed to the community family physician’s patient responsibilities, call schedule, community activities, family, and lifestyle. The students’ projects address the needs of the community of practice.

Integrative Medicine

The Integrative Medicine Elective is a full-time elective in which the students and residents spend time with a number of integrative and complementary medicine practitioners observing their approaches. There is also a didactic component and each trainee is responsible for a presentation on an integrative medicine topic of interest.

Primary Care Sports Medicine

In this course, students participate in a wide variety of activities in order to improve his/her musculoskeletal examination and diagnostic skills and to promote understanding of the field of primary care sports medicine.

Experiences include direct patient care with primary care sports medicine faculty and fellows, group didactics, training room activities, group/individual case-based discussions, time with physical therapists and hand/occupational therapists, and musculoskeletal radiology sessions. Based on interest, we also strive to include exposure to neuropsychiatric and concussion/impact testing and exercise physiology.

Medical Student Research Training and Longitudinal Research Program

The School of Medicine curriculum requirement states that each medical student must complete a scholarly project. In addition to this requirement, additional opportunities exist for more extensive training including the Enrichment Program in Biomedical Research and the Longitudinal Research Program. Dr. John Maier serves as the liaison for medical student research.  Students are encouraged to use the UPSoM site for student research projects (https://upsomtraineeresearch.pitt.edu/) and select the "Family Medicine"  under the mentor affiliation tab to see active projects.  If students would like to explore research opportunities in Family Medicine beyond what is listed please contact John Maier (jsmaier@pitt.edu) to start a discussion of interests.

BioEthics Conference

The student will attend at his/her own expense, one to two weeks at an accredited bioethics conference. The rotation is offered for four (4) weeks of credit. Independent readings, writings and discussion with Dr. Richard Zimmerman or other faculty are needed to complete the course. The student is encouraged to attend any lectures by the Center for Bioethics and Health law.

Community Based Family Centered Maternity Care, UPMC Magee Women’s Hospital

This elective is intended to offer medical students exposure to a wide variety of Family Centered Maternity Care models through a series of inpatient and outpatient clinical experiences. Directed readings and a "mini- project" also help to extend their understanding of the following:

     • Integrated, Interdisciplinary Family Centered Maternity Care
     • Barriers to Prenatal Care
     • Creative Programs for Reducing Low Birth weight infants
     • Innovative Models of Prenatal Care (like Centering Pregnancy Group Visits)
     • Use of Doulas, Midwives, and others in Prenatal and Intrapartum care
     • The role of health insurers in augmenting systems of prenatal care
     • The abuse of detrimental drugs in pregnancy (alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, etc.)

Precision Medicine/Genetics in Primary Care

This elective is intended to offer medical students exposure to genetics and research in a primary care environment through a variety of outpatient clinical and research experiences with Dr. Mylynda Massart and her Primary Care Precision Medicine team including:

1) Genetics in Primary Care
     • Family health history taking
     • Pedigree analysis
     • Genetic Cancer Risk Assessment
     • Provider mediated genetic testing
     • Direct to consumer genetic testing

2) Research in Family Medicine

Family Medicine Cultural Competency

Cultural differences have always been integral to American society and represent a dynamic mixture of races, ethnicities, experiences, practices and beliefs. Indeed, these differences are one of the characteristics most associated with Americans overseas. Only recently has there been recognition of the importance of these cultural differences in medical education. Therefore, there is still some confusion in medical academia regarding what the focus should be and why cultural competence is now of interest to the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting body for allopathic medical schools, universities, managed care organizations, and various governmental bodies. This course is designed to explore the impact of diversity on the training of physicians and other health care providers. 

Medical Leadership, Management and Administration

This elective is intended to offer medical students the opportunity to develop a wide view of medical leadership and management. Through a series of directed readings, guided experiences, and a short project, students will be allowed to extend their knowledge and understanding of the following clinical managerial sciences:

     • Quality Management and Improvement
     • Utilization Management
     • The US Health Care system
     • Cost Benefit Analysis and the distribution of the health care dollar
     • Medical Staff Administration and function
     • Managed Care systems, incentives and trends
     • Measuring physician performance
     • Introductory Accounting and Financial Management concepts

Family Medicine Preceptorship

The major emphases are the development of ambulatory care skills, the treatment of medical and psychosocial problems and preventive health. Most of the time will be spent in outpatient settings associated with the UPMC St. Margaret’s Family Medicine Residency. Students see scheduled patients during office hours as active members of the clinical team. Students are responsible for initial patient assessment and the development of therapeutic plans which will be discussed with a preceptor. Intensive one-on-one supervision and teaching is provided during student office hours. Opportunities are available to use and interpret outpatient procedures such as EKG, tympanometry, spirometry, cultures, microscopy, colposcopy, rapid strep screens, etc., as well as perform or assist with POCUS and in-office procedures including management of IUDs, skin biopsies, and joint injections. Faculty teaches interactive seminars on commonly encountered Family Medicine topics. The clerkship "rounds-out" the student's medical education and provides a more advanced experience in primary care.