Required Clinical Experiences for Clerkships

  • Date Revised: 5/11/2026
  • Last Modified: May 12, 2026
  • Sponsor(s):
  • Responsible Office(s): Council on Curriculum, Office of Assessment and Quality Improvement

Purpose

This policy defines expectations for the definition, communication, tracking, and monitoring of required clinical experiences to ensure all students complete required experiences and that gaps are identified and addressed.

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LCME Elements

Element 6.2 — Required Clinical Experiences

The faculty of a medical school define the types of patients and clinical conditions that medical students are required to encounter, the skills to be performed by medical students, the appropriate clinical settings for these experiences, and the expected levels of medical student responsibility.

Element 8.6 — Monitoring of Completion of Required Clinical Experiences

A medical school has in place a system with central oversight that monitors and ensures completion by all medical students of required clinical experiences in the medical education program and remedies any identified gaps.

Definitions

Required Clinical Experiences

Required patient types, clinical conditions, and/or skills/procedures that all students must encounter or perform during a clerkship.

Levels of Student Responsibility

  • Observation: Student participates through clinical reasoning, discussion, and direct observation.
  • Partial Participation: Student obtains a partial history and/or performs a partial exam and participates in clinical reasoning with completion by a resident or faculty member.
  • Full Participation: Student obtains a full history, performs a full exam, and participates fully in clinical reasoning.

Clerkship Director and Coordinator Responsibilities

Defining Required Clinical Experiences

  • Each clerkship director is responsible for defining the required clinical experiences for the clerkship, ensuring that the number, type, and scope align with clerkship learning objectives, all students have access to required clinical experiences regardless of rotation timing or clinical site, and are achievable within expected student workload.
  • For each required clinical experience, the clerkship director must define:
    • The expected level of student responsibility
    • The appropriate clinical setting(s)
    • The designated alternate learning experience to be used when the required clinical experience cannot be achieved through direct patient care

Communication and Orientation

  • The clerkship director and coordinator will distribute the list of required clinical experiences to all faculty and residents involved in teaching prior to the start of each rotation.
  • Required clinical experience expectations and logging requirements will be reviewed with students during clerkship orientation, mid-term feedback sessions, and posted in the syllabus and/or on Canvas.

Monitoring Individual Student Progress

  • Students’ completion of required clinical experiences is monitored through the centralized logging system (OASIS).
  • Clerkship directors or designated faculty will review each student’s progress during the mid-rotation feedback session to identify gaps and implement corrective strategies.

Student Responsibilities

  • Students must log required clinical experiences in OASIS on at least a weekly basis. A single patient encounter may satisfy multiple required clinical experiences, provided that the criteria for a meaningful encounter are met for each.
  • All required clinical experiences must be logged by midnight of the final day of the clerkship. Students who have not completed all required clinical experiences by this deadline will receive an “Incomplete.”
  • An “Incomplete” must be resolved within two blocks of the end of the clerkship, or the student will receive a failing grade. It is the student’s responsibility to notify the clerkship director and coordinator once all outstanding requirements have been fulfilled.
  • Falsifying patient encounter logs constitutes a violation of the Standards of Professional Conduct and will result in referral to the Honor Council.

Council on Curriculum Responsibilities

  • The Council on Curriculum provides oversight of required clinical experiences across all clerkships, including the approval and ongoing review of required clinical experiences and associated alternate learning experiences.
  • Required clinical experiences are developed by clerkship directors and approved by the Council on Curriculum prior to implementation. Clerkship directors review and update these requirements at least annually based on student completion data, with more comprehensive review occurring during periodic phase/whole curriculum and executive clerkship review processes.
  • The Council on Curriculum monitors aggregate data across clerkships and clinical sites on student completion of required clinical experiences to assess the adequacy of patient volume and case mix and to identify potential gaps.
  • When a required clinical experience is completed through an alternate learning experience for ≥20% of students, the clerkship director must develop and implement a plan to address the gap. The Council on Curriculum reviews these plans and monitors follow-up actions.

Policy Administration

  • Responsible for policy: Council on Curriculum
  • Responsible for tracking compliance: Office of Assessment and Quality Improvement
  • Date most recent policy update: 5/11/2026
  • Date of next review: 2030