Visiting Student Rotation

Overview

Thank you for your interest in our visiting student elective. We truly enjoy having visiting students rotate in our department. Our visiting students are highly anticipated by our faculty and residents. Many of our current residents first experienced our program through a visiting student rotation. We recruit heavily from our competitive extern pool. Go to Student Clerkship to read about our clerkship. Be sure to explore our website, including the history of our program and our resident curriculum.

During the month, students participate in direct patient care under the supervision of attendings and senior residents. Emergency Medicine faculty and chief residents give approximately 12-15 hours of lecture per month. We have now moved all of our course material to Canvas but unfortunately, visiting students are not able to access this website. Instead, they are given a Google document that has all of the information that can be found on Canvas in an email prior to the start of the rotation. In the Google document, there are objectives for each major chief complaint that may be encountered while in the department as well as helpful links and texts. During the rotation, students have laptops that they can use while on shift to access the Google documents as well as review patient charts and document electronically.

When rotating, students are paired up with a faculty advisor (residency leadership) as well as a chief resident to help guide and answer any questions the students may have as they navigate our rotation and applying to Emergency Medicine.

We hope you find the following information helpful as you consider rotating with us. If you are interested in doing a rotation in the Emergency Medicine department, please visit Visiting Student Electives for general information. Students from outside institutions must apply for this rotation through Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS).

Clinical Experience

Visiting students will spend all of their clinical time at University Health Truman Medical Center (UHTMC), the primary training site of our Emergency Medicine Residency. UHTMC is a Level 1 Trauma Center with 62,000 adult patient visits per year. Students participate in direct patient care under the supervision of attendings and senior residents. Scattered throughout the week, students benefit from the presence of an additional “teaching resident” whose primary goal is to take the student’s learning experience to the next level.

Students work an average of 10-12 eight-hour shifts, including one six-hour nursing shift. There is ample opportunity to see and perform a variety of procedures. We encourage our students to be active in the care of their patients and we expect students to present patients directly to faculty.

Didactics

Our monthly didactic series includes a variety of group case-based discussions, traditional didactics and time in our medical skills simulation lab. Our program leadership, chief residents and fellowship-trained faculty contribute to didactics. We also encourage our visiting students to attend our weekly resident conferences. We do Zoom conferences every first Thursday of the month. We encourage visiting students to take full advantage of additional learning opportunities on months when the Residency hosts procedural simulations, the Cadaver Lab and other unique opportunities. This also gives us a chance to further showcase our residency program.

We utilize the flipped classroom approach for many of our didactics. Students are expected to spend  8-10 hours per week on average in self-directed study.

Find more detailed information on monthly student didactic series on our Student Clerkships page.

Evaluation and Grading

Final grades are based on a combination of clinical performance (55%) and National Board of Medical Examiner’s Advanced Clinical Exam (NBME ACE) performance (45%). At the conclusion of each clinical shift, your faculty member will provide you with direct one-on-one feedback, and you will be provided a clinical performance evaluation on a 1-4 scale. Faculty members electronically submit student evaluations at the end of each shift. The scores are averaged at the conclusion of the month. We pay for visiting students to take the NBME ACE exam while rotating with us. If the exam has already been taken at an outside institution, we request the exam score and will incorporate it into your final grade.

Course Availability

Students are accepted for rotation from April through December. There are a limited number of available spots and some months (October- December) are not available every year. Visiting students are screened and scheduled based on availability and competitiveness. If you are interested in rotating early, in April and May, please reach out to our Clerkship Director, Melanie Camejo,  and our Clerkship Coordinator, Lara Maisch.

Rotation Application

Applications are ONLY accepted through the Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS). Students from outside institutions must apply for this rotation through VSAS. Please visit our Visiting Student Electives page for general information.

Applications are generally reviewed in late March or early April, and spots are typically offered through June.  Additional spots are rarely offered after June. Only complete applications will be reviewed. We are not able to accept international medical students unless your institution has a pre-existing written agreement with UMKC.

If applicable, please consider looking at our disadvantaged visiting student scholarship.

Residency Interviews

Our visiting students are automatically granted interviews. We also plan to write a Standardized Letter of Evaluation (SLOE) for our externs. This is facilitated by our advising system whereby we link our visiting students up with a program director or assistant program director and chief advisor. We generally offer interviews in July and August for our visiting externs. If a visiting student is rotating during November or December, we attempt to accommodate them into our residency interview schedule while here.