Increasing Medical Students Clinical Training Capacity Through the Establishment of Dedicated, Academic Out-patients' Clinics. The Case of NAC-Neurology Academic Clinic in a Tertiary Medical Center.

Abstract

Objectives: A global shortage of healthcare professionals emphasizes the need for expanded clinical training capacity of medical students worldwide. Patient-centered clinical teaching, the pillar of clinical education, has become the main challenge for medical educators, in all clinical disciplines. The solution will, inevitably come, in three dimensions: elongation of learning hours throughout daytime and during evenings, extending from hospital-based education to community clinics and assimilating a larger volume of simulative training.

Methods: The embodiment of two of three dimensions (extension along the day and to clinics-based teaching) is realized in our NAC-Neurology Academic Clinic: a teaching-centered complex of ambulatory neurology clinics, functioning within a tertiary medical center in the afternoon and evening hours.

Results: Establishment of NAC enabled us to extend our patient-centered clinical teaching, during a 40-week teaching year, to: (A) a larger audience of medical students, with up to 320 students annually, experiencing high-quality, personalized teaching; (B) significantly shortening patients' waiting lists to highly demanded specialized neurologists with an average shortening of 90 days for the NAC patients; (C) enable our in-house physicians to become "full timers" on an educational basis with financial incentives, potentially increasing their yearly salaries by 14,000$, along with extended academic credits and considerable contribution to future generations.

Conclusion: The NAC model, described in this article, is considered successful and is currently duplicated to other clinical disciplines including infectious diseases, gastroenterology, and psychiatry.