Clinical Education

The Clinical Education department at CMED believes in the benefits of early exposure of students to the clinical environment and in learning embedded in their future workplace. Our medical curriculum is structured into 3 phases, and each phase offers students a unique clinical learning experience integrated into the curriculum and appropriate for the particular knowledge and skills students gain as they progress through the program.

Clinical Education in Phase 1 – Transition Phase

When joining CMED, students will have their very first clinical excursion even before the coursework officially starts: During the first week at the college, students are invited to a 3-day Student Boot camp, where they meet our faculty and their peers, and where we organize fieldtrips to a Primary Healthcare Center and to Hamad General Hospital. Clinical practitioners present their work within the real clinical setting, talk about their daily routines and professional values and engage students in an open discussion about their expectations. Students also undertake preliminary visits to several clinical settings in primary and secondary care. The fieldtrips build the foundation for students to recognize what they will work for during the next six years at the medical college – becoming a doctor.

Clinical Education in Phase 2 – Pre-Clerkship Phase

Overview

During the Pre-Clerkship Phase from Year 2 to the end of the first semester of Year 4, the clinical education program runs horizontally to the integrated organ systems. The program supports each unit with four components:

Clinical Resource Sessions:

For each Problem-Based Learning (PBL) case, students will attend one clinical resource session. Clinical resource sessions are formal classes provided by a doctor working in primary or secondary care. In these sessions, students focus on the clinical aspects of the problem.

Clinical Skills Training

Every week, students have a clinical skills training session. In the CMED Skill Lab, students practice their clinical skills on simulated patients under the supervision of clinical tutors from the College and doctors from primary and secondary care. Simulated patients are trained women and men who simulate histories and allow students to examine them, providing feedback to the students on their performance, in the secure environment of the clinical skills lab.

The clinical and communication skills include history taking, physical examination, procedural skills and documentation skills, interpretation of clinical data and point-of-care ultrasound. From the second year onwards, students for example learn how to monitor vital signs including temperature, pulse rate, respiratory rate and blood pressure, how to take blood samples and how to perform intramuscular injections.

Clinical Placements

Whereas practice in the controlled environment of the clinical skills’ lab is key to develop a sound foundation of the required clinical skills, exposure to patients in the Primary Health Centers reinforces their learning. In a next step, it is important that students have the chance to validate their learning in a real-life scenario in their future workplace. During each unit, students are sent for two clinical placements, where they follow the doctors and observe the daily routines in the clinical practice. They have the opportunity to meet patients with similar health problems as presented in their Units and to practice their history-taking and examination skills on real patients under the supervision of clinical faculty physicians. During the early years, these placements are mainly in primary healthcare centers.

Experiential Review Session

As students observe the clinical environment during the placements, the reflection on their observations becomes an additional core element of their learning. After the students completed their placements, they jointly attend one review session per unit, where they discuss the experiences they made in the clinic. Under the guidance of a behavioural scientist and a family physician, the discussion reflects on their clinical placements and allows students to share their experiences with other students.

Ultrasound

Due to the significant role of ultrasound-enhanced physical examination in modern practice, CMED emphasizes the importance that our medical students will be experienced and well trained to apply the principles of ultrasound by the time they start their clerkships.

Virtual and augmented reality

Our clinical skills training is based on the latest educational technology to provide students a comprehensive as well as innovative learning experience. The applied methodology offers a broad range of tools and equipment, which allows the students to explore a clinical problem from multiple angles.

In simulated clinical rounds, students for example learn about a particular patient and meet this patient in a virtual reality. They can witness how a patient is submitted to the emergency department and observe the clinical examinations of this patient. After the students complete the simulated clinical round, they will meet a simulated relative of this patient in reality, played by our trained simulated patients, for a briefing about what happened to the patient.

Clinical Education in Phase 3 – Clerkship Phase

During the 2.5 years Clerkship Phase, students will study and practice in the hospital setting. From the spring semester in Year 4 until Year 6, students will go through clinical rotations at CMED’s clinical partners in HMC, the PHCC and Sidra Medicine. CMED’s objective is that students will not “shadow” a doctor and follow him through the department. CMED students will learn to take ownership and initiative in the clinical workplace, while they are “shadowed” by their supervisors.

Clinical Supervisors in the clinical setting are led by CMED’s Clerkship and Associate Clerkship Directors, who are responsible for the planning and execution of the clinical teaching program. CMED offers the following rotations:

Year 4, spring semester: Integrated Longitudinal Clerkship

In collaboration with Hamad Medical Corporation, the first 14 weeks’ rotation will introduce students to hospital medicine: general medicine and surgery, in a more protected environment of the rural hospitals in Al Wakra, Hazm Mebaireek and Al Khor.

Students will spend a full semester in their first rotation, learning about how hospital care is provided to patients. Students will become members of the teams and will be assessed according to their ability to contribute to patient care. They will apply evidence-based medicine to decision making. Clinical learning activities focus on application of clinical skills, practical techniques and procedures, while students will practice communication skills, data collection, and reasoning with medical/ surgical patients. At the same time, the longitudinal clerkship provides students the opportunity to follow patients through the system to develop a holistic understanding of how care is provided to patients through multidisciplinary teams and how different departments inter-react. During the integrated longitudinal clerkship, students attend regular outpatient clinics over a number of weeks (2 days for 12 weeks), identifying patients who require investigation and treatment, to follow their journeys through the system and attend regular debriefing sessions with the same clinical faculty member.

Integrated Longitudinal Clerkships have been shown beneficial in that they enhance students’ educational experiences and - at the same - time lead to improved measures of patient-centeredness and empathy with equal or better student performance on standardized exams, clinical assessments, sub-internships, and national board examinations when compared to rotation-based clerkships.

Year 5

9 weeks each of the clerkships in General Medicine, General Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics

Year 6

8 weeks each of the clerkship in Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Mental Health and Psychology, and selected clerkships. The selected clinical clerkship is divided into two 4-weeks’ placements. During the first four weeks, students learn from shadowing residents in the specialty that they plan to pursue in the future. The final 4 weeks are spent after being selected in the residency program to get deeper understanding of their future role.