Undergraduate Medical Education 

St. Charles Health System serves as an official clinical training site for allopathic medical students from OHSU, osteopathic medical students from Western University Health Sciences’ COMP-NW campus in Lebanon, OR, and AHEC Scholars. Medical students and other AHEC Scholars continue their training through the pandemic, unless their schools request modifications to their clinical rotations or the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) issues updated guidance.

Check also information about Rural Training Track and Student Housing.

Preceptors (teachers of medical students) work with over 200 students per year to ensure they are “residency-ready” by focusing on the AAMC’s 13 Core Entrustable Professional Activities as well as the American Board of Medical Specialties/Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s Core Competencies.

Core Competencies

  • Practice-based Learning and Improvement: Show an ability to investigate and evaluate patient care practices, appraise and assimilate scientific evidence and improve the practice of medicine.
  • Patient Care and Procedural Skills: Provide care that is compassionate, appropriate and effective treatment for health problems and to promote health.
  • Systems-based Practice: Demonstrate awareness of and responsibility to the larger context and systems of health care. Be able to call on system resources to provide optimal care (e.g. coordinating care across sites or serving as the primary case manager when care involves multiple specialties, professions or sites).
  • Medical Knowledge: Demonstrate knowledge about established and evolving biomedical, clinical and cognate sciences and their application in patient care.
  • Interpersonal and Communication Skills: Demonstrate skills that result in effective information exchange and teaming with patients, their families and professional associates (e.g. fostering a therapeutic relationship that is ethically sound, uses effective listening skills with non-verbal and verbal communication; working as both a team member and, at times, as a leader).
  • Professionalism: Demonstrate a commitment to carrying out professional responsibilities, adherence to ethical principles and sensitivity to diverse patient populations.

Participation and performance expectations

In addition to full and engaged participation in the clinical rotation, the educational experience at St. Charles includes mandatory attendance at weekly Grand Rounds, Interprofessional Education (IPE) lectures and discussions, clinical conferences and committee meetings, as well as volunteering at health-related events within the community.
Medical, physician assistant and nurse practitioner students are often invited by the Cascades East Area Health Education Center (AHEC) to speak with college, high school, and middle school students about their journey to medical school as part of a Health Occupations program or summer camp program.

Teaching as learning

Students may be assigned a topic on which to produce and present either a PowerPoint, research paper, or a case study to the other students and preceptors in their cohort. Students are responsible for compiling and presenting his/her own research in the best educational format suited to their subject matter, using the most current evidence-based sources available.
Students may also be assigned to write a needs assessment for a Continuing Medical Education activity, which will be due for submission to the St. Charles Clerkship Specialist by the end of their rotation.

Support for research and academic assignments is available through the St. Charles Medical Library, which can be reached at [email protected].