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 https://med.umkc.edu/em/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.
These students are also given access to Rosh Review Question Bank which is provided by the UMKC-SOM.
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 follow this link for general information: UMKC School of Medicine Visiting Student Electives. 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, the primary training site of our Emergency Medicine residency. University Health Truman Medical Center 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 6-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 include 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. On months where the residency will host procedural simulations, the cadaver lab and other unique opportunities, we urge visiting students to take full advantage of these additional learning opportunities. It 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 on average 8-10 hours per week in self-directed study. Please click here for more detailed information regarding our monthly student didactic series.
Evaluation & Grading
Final grades are based on a combination of clinical performance (55%) and National Board of Medical Examiner’s Advanced Clinical Exam (NBME ACE; 45%) performance. At the conclusion of each clinical shift, your faculty member will provide you with direct 1:1 feedback, and you will be provided a clinical performance evaluation (1-4 scale). Using the laptops, 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 April-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 (April/May) please reach out to the clerkship director and coordinator directly.
Rotation Application
Applications are ONLY accepted through VSAS. Students from outside institutions must apply for this rotation through Visiting Student Application Service (VSAS). Please follow this link for general information: UMKC School of Medicine Visiting Student Electives. Applications are generally reviewed in late March or early April of each year, and spots are generally offered through June. (Rarely are additional spots 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 URM 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 faculty (PD or APD) 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.