Clinical Experiences

From first year to fourth, our medical students receive hands-on clinical training to acquire the skills necessary to become practice-ready physicians. These skills are introduced during the student’s first venture into the medical school curriculum and then taught and evaluated during all four years of their medical school experience.

A critical component of curriculum is the Doctoring Clinical Experience program, which pairs first and second year medical students with medical faculty and private preceptors for one half day of the week. Over the course of two years, each medical student works with two different preceptors in primary and specialty practice areas. The last two years of the curriculum are devoted to clinical experience through clerkships. These clerkships offer an integrated clinical leaning experience that exposes students to common disorders representative of those seen the clinical practice.

Along with the skills, attitudes and behaviors learned through clerkships and outside clinical experiences, students are given the opportunity to practice their skills in a safe, controlled environment. In 2005, the College opened the Center for Advanced Clinical Learning, a high-quality venue for teaching and testing clinical skills to medical students. The Center uses innovative technology as well as actor or “standardized” patients to simulate actual patient care experiences. This allows medical students to learn necessary skills and participate in objective, standardized clinical exams. The Center improves the quality of healthcare for our community by standardizing and improving physicians’ interactions with patients and by training competent, caring medical professionals.

Community Outreach Programs

Community service and outreach initiatives have long been a tradition at the College. We are committed to providing leadership in dealing with the quality of health and life issues that affect our community and abroad. Our community outreach programs take healthcare outside of the classroom and hospital walls, thus giving our medical students the opportunity to provide appropriate healthcare to people in need. Our medical students have the chance to participate in a wide-variety of community outreach initiatives. The following is a list of programs that are offered to our medical students.

• Project World Health
• International Health Service Corps (IHSC)
• BRIDGE Healthcare Clinic
• International Medicine Scholarly Concentration

Research

Our M.D./Ph.D. program within the Morsani College of Medicine is designed to foster development of the next generation of physician-scientists who will make major contributions via translational medicine to enhance the diagnosis and treatment of human disease. The program is oriented towards a small group of highly qualified and motivated students and is structured to provide an outstanding medical education, scientific training, and state-of-the-art clinical practice by integrating these experiences in an interdisciplinary environment. The program is uniquely tailored to meet the needs of each individual student and promote a deep sense of scientific discovery, combined with the application to modern medicine.

In addition, the mission of the Scholarly Concentration in Research is to provide interested medical students at the Morsani College of Medicine the opportunity to engage their scientific curiosity in basic and clinical science within their four year medical curriculum, and begin to develop their potential as physician scientists. At the end of this program, students will have acquired tools essential to undertake, and critically evaluate, clinical and basic science research. Students who complete this program will be prepared to continue their development as clinical or basic physician scientists during their residency, and beyond.

Top Notch Clinical Faculty

USF Health boasts the area’s largest medical practice, with more than 400 physicians treating this region’s residents. They see more than 500,000 patients each year in dozens of medical facilities – large and small – along the Florida Gulf Coast. In the Tampa Bay area, 42 percent of the physicians who made the 2010 Best Doctors in America list work at USF Health.

Teaching Centers

Our medical students have the opportunity to learn at an extraordinary range of hospitals and teaching centers—among the busiest in the nation. Tampa General Hospital (TGH), a private, non-profit, 985-bed facility, and the area’s only Level 1 Trauma and Burn Unit, is the primary clinical training site for the College of Medicine. In addition to TGH, James Haley VA Hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center and All Children’s Hospital, the Morsani College of Medicine also provides education, training and research programs at over 100 facilities throughout the service area and across the state.

Location

Those who choose to join the USF family have an even bigger community to explore: the Tampa Bay area. With approximately 3 million residents, the Tampa Bay area is one of the world’s most desirable areas in which to live, boasting a booming employment rate for medical professionals, year-round festivals and activities and a climate that is pleasant and sunny. The Tampa Bay area is situated off the Gulf of Mexico. Local beaches have been rated in the top 10 best by several vacation-rating groups. It’s no wonder that more that half of USF’s 175,000 graduates stay right here after graduation.