Broadening the clinical spectrum for medical students towards primary care: a pre-post analysis of the effect of the implementation of a longitudinal clerkship in general practice

BACKGROUND: Exposure to a broad spectrum of patient cases is a mainstay of undergraduate medical education. This study aimed to assess how many primary care-specific clinical pictures final-year medical students in traditional block rotations had encountered, and how this changed after a curricular change that included the implementation of a four-year longitudinal clerkship in primary care. METHODS: Final-year students before, and after, implementation of the clerkship were asked which of the clinical pictures most relevant to primary care they had seen. We compared the overall proportions of clinical pictures seen by the two cohorts. RESULTS: In the first cohort, 96 (66%) students responded, and 94 (65%) in the second. Before the curricular change, students had encountered a mean of 26.3 of the 34 primary care-specific clinical pictures (77.2%). After implementation of the longitudinal clerkship, this increased by 1.1 (4.2%, P = 0.038). Among the eight clinical pictures seen the least by students in the first cohort, we found a significant increase in the proportion of students seeing polymalgia rheumatica, frozen shoulder, epicondylitis and Dupuytren’s contracture after the clerkship’s implementation. CONCLUSION: The undergraduate longitudinal clerkship in primary care broadened the spectrum of clinical pictures seen by medical students, to include more clinical pictures commonly seen in primary care. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-018-1152-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.