Rationale And Special Features of Ambulatory Care Education

Students need broad specialty experience to guide career choice

Student choice for specialty training after medical school is strongly influenced by experiences on clinical clerkships. Quality of teaching, patient care opportunities, practice environment, role models, and mentorship are all important as students seek to understand how their own interests would be served in a specific specialty. Because most internal medicine is practiced in the office setting, the ambulatory component of the internal medicine clerkship seeks to provide students with the experiences they need to understand the current practice and potential opportunities for a career in internal medicine.