{"id":154718,"date":"2019-09-26T15:02:51","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T19:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?post_type=school-college-post&p=154718"},"modified":"2019-09-27T10:44:31","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T14:44:31","slug":"new-medical-students-already-meet-first-patients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/09\/new-medical-students-already-meet-first-patients\/","title":{"rendered":"New Medical Students Already Meet Their First Patients"},"content":{"rendered":"

UConn School of Medicine\u2019s Clinical Longitudinal Immersion in the Community (CLIC) Program has students working alongside community-based primary care physicians during the first three\u2014and sometimes four\u2014years of medical school. Last week, another class of first-year students and their physician preceptors marked the start of the program\u2019s 25th<\/sup> year.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur longitudinal clinical mentorship program was one of the first of its kind when introduced in 1995 (then named Student Continuity Practice) and has become a model curriculum for medical schools across the nation,\u201d says Amy Chmielewski, director of Clinical Education Administration at UConn School of Medicine. \u201cThe early clinical exposure is what attracts many of the students that apply to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

This September the 110 students of Class of 2023, the medical school\u2019s largest incoming class to date, were matched with their faculty preceptors, many of which are UConn Health physicians. Currently, 350 medical students are enrolled in the CLIC Program, with 250 physician faculty across 60 Connecticut towns serving as medical student preceptors.<\/p>\n

One of the CLIC Program sites is UConn Health\u2019s Internal Medicine Associates practice in the Outpatient Pavilion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really cool applying what we are learning in medical school,\u201d shared first-year medical student Grigoriy Androsov, 27, of New Hampshire. \u201cIt\u2019s a real strength of UConn and an important experience that gives us the opportunity to become doctors. The early clinical experience is allowing me to build patient-care skills and patient-physician relationships to build better patient outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Androsov\u2019s first patients he cared for was Antonella Bona, 71, of Hartford, who happens to be a former high school science and biology teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from academia so I think it\u2019s really great,\u201d says Bona, a primary care patient of CLIC Program preceptor Dr. Laurie Caines, a 2006 graduate of UConn School of Medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been poked and prodded by the medical students,\u201d laughed Bona. \u201cI know the quality of UConn Health\u2019s care and I\u2019m very comfortable being cared for here by my doctor along with the medical students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caines went through the CLIC Program experience as a medical student and has served as a medical student preceptor for the program since 2010.<\/p>\n

\"\"
First year medical student Emily Lopez-Santa (right) performs an examination supervised by Dr. Julian Nieves, primary care physician at UConn Health on September 19, 2019 (Tina Encarnacion\/UConn Health photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen you teach others you learn more,\u201d says Caines. \u00a0\u201cI love teaching the medical students in the clinic.\u201d<\/p>\n

First-year medical student Emily Lopez-Santa, 22, hails from Puerto Rico, having recently graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, and is learning from her primary care preceptor, Dr. Julian Nieves, and his patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was one of the reasons I chose UConn for its early patient exposure,\u201d says Lopez-Santa. \u201cIt\u2019s really exciting. I met my first patient ever. I really like being able to interact with real patients so early on in medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n

And patients aren\u2019t sugarcoating things in the exam room, shared Lopez-Santa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am really getting in early on the inside scoop of what patients like and don\u2019t like. They have been sharing real feedback, tips and tricks with us medical students and it\u2019s helping us so we don\u2019t create any bad habits early on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez-Santa added: \u201cIt\u2019s amazing to see the impact our patient care is having already and how patients trust us. We really take that to heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

And compared to her home of Puerto Rico Lopez-Santa shared that Connecticut weather has been a little different.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s cold but UConn is warm like a family. Everyone is so willing to always help us learn,\u201d says Lopez-Santa.<\/p>\n

Her primary care preceptor Nieves agrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always a privilege to be involved with medical students and the CLIC Program,\u201d says Nieves. \u201cThe early insights we share with students have a fundamental role in their educational experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

CLIC provides a unique experience allowing the student to experience first-hand the realities of medicine, from patient care to health promotion and disease prevention. Students also gain an appreciation for the business of medicine, and the personal and professional challenges that physicians face.<\/p>\n

Chmielewski added: \u201cThe school would not be able to have such a successful program without the generous participation of the faculty, their staff, and their patient populations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn School of Medicine\u2019s Clinical Longitudinal Immersion in the Community (CLIC) Program has students working alongside community-based primary care physicians during the first three\u2014and sometimes four\u2014years of medical school. Last week, another class of first-year students and their physician preceptors marked the start of the program\u2019s 25th year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":154719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1868],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-154718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meds"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-29 10:31:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154722,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154718\/revisions\/154722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/154719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154718"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=154718"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=154718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}