Course on care of patients with chronic illness: Patient-centered medical home model

Background: In the United States, the Patient-centered Medical Home (PCMH) is an emerging concept in primary care that is guiding clinical reorganization to meet the needs of patients with chronic illness. We developed a one-semester curriculum to teach the principles and practice of PCMH to medical and physician assistant students during their clinical clerkship year. Methods: The mini-course on PCMH consists of three 3-h weekend sessions over 16 weeks and a student project to develop constructive planning ideas for an assigned clinical site. In the first two sessions, students receive didactics and engage in project development discussions. Subsequently, participants work with a faculty advisor and clinic site administrative staff to identify and analyze an area of interest for the student and clinic site. In the last session, students present their projects to the larger group. During the first year of implementation, student evaluations were collected after the first and last sessions. Results: At the end of the course, students reported confidence in their understanding of PCMH concepts and practical implementations of it. Completing a student project at their clinical sites posed challenges that were logistical, rather than conceptual, and was difficult to integrate with classroom learning. Discussion: We present an interprofessional PCMH curriculum for medical and physician assistant students during their clinical year. This course provides students a familiarity with principles of the medical home model and practical experience with practice redesign issues in the context of PCMH transformation.