Continuity Curriculum

During your training as medical students at the University of Washington, you will learn much about diseases, diagnoses and treatments. However, all of this knowledge is irrelevant without understanding how illness and health affect your patients. The fundamental goal of the continuity experience outlined below is to enhance your foundation for understanding how patients are affected by disease. We hope that by following patients overtime, building relationships with them and talking to their doctors, you will better apply your newfound knowledge to heal others with compassion and caring. Additionally, the continuity curriculum is designed to help you understand the many ways continuity of care in medicine benefits patients, physicians and society.

The continuity curriculum is envisioned to be a longitudinal theme in your medical school training. The content of the curriculum is designed to mirror your experiences as you move from year to year in medical school.

Year 1 : During a preclinical preceptorship you will have the opportunity to follow a patient over time. This will allow you to understand how illnesses change overtime, explore what patients think about seeing the same doctor for medical care and how various states of health and disease affect patients’ lives. You will also have an opportunity to interview a patient with a chronic illness to explore similar themes. Finally, after working with your preceptor, you will discuss what continuity of care means to physicians. Reflection about what you learned from both the patient and physician should enhance your understanding of the importance of continuity of care in medical practice. You will share these writings (reflections) with both your ICMI and college faculty. These reflections will become part of your portfolio.

Year 2 : During your ICMII class, you will explore various aspects of continuity of care with each of the patients you interview. It is likely that you also will learn what happens when continuity of care is not available, and how this situation affects patients’ lives and health. You also will discuss clinical studies that examine the effects of continuity of care on medical outcomes and patient satisfaction with your college faculty.

Years 3 & 4 : During your clerkships you will explore YOUR role in providing continuity of care. In reality, students often spend more time with patients than anyone else on the patient care team. Each specific continuity experience will be unique to the individual clerkship because each specialty insures that patients receive continuous care in different ways. You will share your reflections about these experiences with your college faculty and these reflections will also become part of your portfolio.

We think that this will be fun, inject more patient centered experiences in the preclinical years and help you realize what an important role you play in patient care as you move to the clinics in your third and fourth years.