MILESTONE

About Us

The Tufts University School of Medicine - Maine Medical Center Program (TUSM-MMC) 3rd year Longitudinal Integrated Curriculum (LIC) will place 18 Maine Track students at Urban (MMC) and Rural hospital sites starting in May, 2011. The innovative LIC model is learner-, patient- and community-oriented. As such, LIC students participate in the comprehensive care of patients over time, thus developing continuing learning relationships with these patients' clinicians, and meeting the majority of the year's core clinical competencies across multiple disciplines simultaneously.  Core concepts of the LIC include:

• Students live in a rural community or in Portland for nine months, are assigned to core discipline preceptors at their hospital, and have their own panel of patients throughout the clerkship. The panel will initially consist of 8-10 patients, and students accrue patients into their panel over the course of the 9 months.
• Patient contact occurs at multiple junctures of patient care including: routine office visits, home visits, subspecialty evaluations, office or hospital-based procedures, hospital care, emergency care, and ancillary staff evaluations, etc.
• Contact with the primary preceptor, core discipline preceptors, sub-specialists and teams of care is creatively woven throughout the student’s typical weekly schedule.
• The typical learning mode is longitudinal and one-on-one, student and attending, and patient-based.
• The students follow their patients to appointments, participate in their procedures, and play a part in relevant case conferences.
• A weekly schedule that includes half day clinics with core discipline preceptors, time for didactics, and time for student led experiences (see below).
• The opportunity to participate in committees, medical staff meetings, and quality improvement programs.

 

This model embodies the concept of education continuity in terms of continuity of care and continuity of supervision. The student will benefit from a view of each patient as a “whole” person while participating in the comprehensive care of their patients over time (continuity of care). In addition, each student will have a core group of faculty that will be dedicated to the student’s professional development over an extended period of time (continuity of supervision).   It is a learning experience that is more reflective of what they are likely to experience as a physician, includes more authentic feedback and evaluation processes (continuity of evaluation), and the opportunity to develop strong professional mentoring relationships.