​Electives

 

Med-235 Tribal Ambulatory Healthcare Experience

Over the course of the quarter, students will shadow physicians at the IHC in Pauma Valley. The clinic provides a full spectrum of on-site and outreach services and programs to the North San Diego County reservations of Inaja-Cosmit, La Jolla, Los Coyotes, Mesa Grande, Pala, Pauma, Rincon, San Pasqual, and Santa Ysabel, where you will be able to further your understanding of Native American health and learn key components of the physical exam, H&P, and chronic disease management. The Indian Health Council has a number of additional requirements (e.g. background checks, drug testing, etc) that will need to be completed prior to participating.

 


FPM-224 Health Fair Medicine

This course explores an alternative way to deliver healthcare to underserved communities: health fairs. In conjunction with Asian Pacific Health Foundation (APHF), students are trained to volunteer at outreaches where they will practice screening methods for diseases that disproportionately affect Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities (e.g. diabetes, cholesterol, hepatitis C, hypertension, obesity, metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis). There is no didactic sessions, but a minimum of 1 volunteer orientation/training and 1 community outreach is required for completion of the course. No language skills are required.

 

Somi-236 Fade Hypertension: Intervensions in the Community

Started by medical student Manny Keiler, this course emphasizes the importance of developing relationships with local communities to deliver effective healthcare, particularly with regards to disparities in cardiovascular disease. Students will address health disparities in cardiovascular disease primarily through screening local populations for hypertension. Strategies for screening for hypertension will include learning and executing procedures for taking a manual & automated blood pressure, as well as learning clinically important features of hypertension (e.g. prevalence, risk factors, epidemiology, and prevention strategies). There is no didactic sessions, but a minimum of 1 volunteer orientation/training and 3 community outreach is required for completion of the course. No language skills are required.


 


Med-250 Medical Spanish

The course is primarily focused on developing medical Spanish language communication for students with preexisting Spanish conversational skills, who have at least one year of college level Spanish or 3 years of high school Spanish or equivalent. For students with less formal training in Spanish, and who want to enroll in the Intermediate level sequence, a screening test will be available upon request. The overall objective of this course is for students to attain proficiency; that is, for students to acquire the requisite linguistic and cultural skills needed to communicate in Spanish while conducting medical interviews. Students will gain experiences in patient interviews, Spanish-language skills, discussion of common diagnoses, procedural consent, treatment plans, and patient education in Spanish to empower medical students to practice medicine with the nationally growing monolingual Spanish-speaking patient population.