 February 2003 • Volume 9 • Number 2 |
 Robert Brooks, M.D., center, associate dean for health affairs at the medical college, reviews a standardized patient's differential diagnosis with second-year students Julie Gladden and Adam Ouimet. |
 Brooks offers Ouimet advice on auscultation techniques. This standardized patient, "Mr. White," presented with respiratory complaints. |
The Clinical Learning Center at the Florida State University College of Medicine, Tallahassee, is where the rubber meets the road. Here, the college's first- and second-year students get their first taste of real-life, hands-on "doctoring."
Students practice their medical interviewing and physical assessment skills using so-called standardized patients -- community members trained to act out the roles of patients with specific health conditions. Often, these individuals actually have the signs and symptoms characterizing a given health problem.
Standardized patients are used by roughly three-fourths of the nation's medical schools. At FSU, as elsewhere, each student's performance is critiqued by faculty. What's unusual about FSU's program, however, is that patient-student interactions are videotaped, allowing additional teaching and self-evaluation opportunities.
Another innovation: Right from the get-go, these students are entering their findings in an electronic medical record. Here and throughout the medical college, the emphasis is on making best use of today's technology. It's a cause the college's founding dean, FP Joseph Scherger, M.D., M.P.H., has long advocated. By using online communications and informatics tools, physicians can revolutionize patient care, he noted.
Take e-mail, for example. "Once you've got an e-mail relationship with your patients, you've incredibly personalized your interactions with them," said Scherger. "You've created an open conduit. They don't have to go through an answering service; they don't have to go through the front office."
Eugene Trowers, M.D., seconded Scherger's thoughts on the value of electronic interchange. Trowers is assistant dean of the Tallahassee regional medical school campus, where some members of the Class of 2005 will begin their clinical training later this year.
"Telecommunications will be key in reaching out to all these far-flung areas," he said, referring to the two other regional medical campuses in Pensacola and Orlando, as well as three more planned for Jacksonville, Sarasota and Fort Myers. Students will rotate among community-based training environments at these regional campuses during their third and fourth years, with the Tallahassee college serving as "home base."
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Copyright © 2003 by American Academy of Family Physicians.