MDC7180
OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY CLERKSHIP

MDC7180: OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY CLERKSHIP SYLLABUS 2025-2026
Duration: 6 Weeks
Clerkship web page: https://ufl.instructure.com/courses/506618

Educational Philosophy

Clerkship Goals

1. Create an environment that provides opportunities and motivation for students to appreciate the unique medical concerns of women within the context of a general medical education.
2. Provide students with the opportunity to evaluate and manage common gynecologic and obstetric problems with emphasis on the outpatient setting.
3. Provide students with an understanding of the doctor-female patient relationship and an opportunity to refine communication skills.
4. Provide an opportunity to develop effective methods of data collection and record keeping in a time-limited setting.
5. Provide a setting for the development of motor skills needed for the diagnosis and treatment of common gynecologic and obstetric problems.

The Adult Learner
We understand that you have all worked tremendously hard to reach this point, and we respect you for that. Furthermore, we know that as adult learners there many aspects of your education that should be considered:

1. You have appropriately high expectations – and so do we! You are investing a lot to be here, and we will work very hard to prepare you to be a well-trained physician. Along those lines, we promise that you will get the most by putting as much effort into your education as possible.
2. Remember: our resident trainees are also adult learners. This means (1) they are your closest colleagues and are eager and well-equipped to facilitate your education. (2) BUT they are under similar stress as you! We specifically recruit residents who are interested in educating students, but they may get caught up in their many responsibilities. For this reason, we strongly encourage you to seek out opportunities and get involved in patient care.
3. We will treat you like self-sufficient adults. We will not micromanage your time and do not have the bandwidth to harass you to turn in required assignments. Completion of required administrative tasks is critical for the practice of medicine: license recertification, closure of charts, etc.
4. You have a lot on your plate besides just your education: family, finances, friends, other obligations. (We get it!) If you have conflicts, please let us know so that we can help figure out a solution.
5. You are well aware of which educational formats are most useful for you. Some will find discussion-based learning to be valuable, while others will thrive by immersing in patient care. We encourage you to make the most of your time with us, which will frequently mean moving outside of your comfort zone.

Learning Activities

Case Based Conferences (CBCs)
Case-Based Conferences (CBC) are small group interactive didactic sessions. Each is facilitated by a faculty member with clinical interest in the material covered. Over the 6 weeks, CBCs will guide you through nearly all of the medical student educational objectives to solidify your understanding of the curriculum.

How to prepare
On the Canvas calendar, each session contains the associated learning case with discussion questions, as well as supplemental materials for preparation, such as APGO teaching videos. Prepare by working through the discussion questions and familiarizing yourself with the topic so that during the session you are able to increase your understanding of higher-level aspects of the content (rather than seeing it for the first time).

Each student will have a different approach to learning the content. We strongly recommend reading the chapter of the Beckmann text that corresponds to each case. At the heading of each case is the corresponding MSEO, which corresponds exactly to a chapter in Beckmann. On this page, we have also provided links to the corresponding teaching videos. Be prepared to answer questions related to the case!

Attendance expectations
Because of the interactive nature of CBC, attendance is mandatory. However, occasionally there will be situations where you are engaged in a unique educational opportunity that conflicts with one of these assignments (i.e. you are scrubbed into a surgery in which you are actively assisting, or you are waiting for a patient to deliver whom you have been following all morning). When this occurs, we encourage you to choose the experience that will provide you with the most educational payback for the time invested. This may indeed mean that you scrub out of the surgery in order to attend a CBC you are particularly interested in, or it may mean that you skip the CBC in order to see the rest of the clinical case. If you are unsure what to do, you can always ask your resident or attending for advice. You will never be penalized for either choice.

If your faculty does not show up five minutes or less before the start time, contact Heather to find the faculty.

Labor and Delivery Scavenger Hunt and Required Clinical Encounters Form
Because Labor and Delivery is a fast-paced environment with a steep learning curve and many procedures and techniques that are new for medical students, the goal of this activity is to help you feel more comfortable engaging in level-appropriate patient care tasks.

The form is appended to the end of this document. Print a copy to have with you throughout the rotation.

Scavenger Hunt
The L&D Scavenger Hunt is a list of 30 experiences that we encourage you to seek opportunities to perform. Once completed, ask a resident or midwife or attending to sign off on that task for you. Completion of these tasks is highly encouraged but not required. You are encouraged to take the opportunity to seek feedback on these topics as well. In the spirit of friendly competition, at the end of the six-week rotation Dr. Bruggeman will award a small prize to the student(s) with the highest number of items.

Required Clinical Experiences
The bottom of the form includes those clinical experiences which are required for graduation. Note that you must have each of these experiences signed off.

Please notify Ms. Ellis if you are missing any of these at the end of week 5 to determine an alternative experience. Failure to do so will result in a lower portfolio score, and you may have to make up that experience in the fourth year.

APGO uWISE Test Bank
The APGO Undergraduate Web-Based Interactive Self-Evaluation (uWISE) exam was developed to help medical students acquire the necessary basic knowledge in obstetrics and gynecology, regardless of future medical specialty choice. The quizzes are also an excellent tool to help prepare for the NBME subject exam.

The uWISE questions are based on and linked to the 11th edition of the APGO Medical Student Educational Objectives. Each quiz represents one objective and contains 10 questions for each objective. You may choose to take a comprehensive test of 50 questions, chosen randomly from the quizzes. If you take the test multiple times, different questions will be randomly selected.

Accessing uWise
Heather Ellis will send out a document from APGO with instructions along with a code that will enable you to access the question banks.

Required uWise Questions
Before completion of the clerkship, you are REQUIRED to complete the two 50-item comprehensive quizzes (there is one for OB and one for Gyn). These questions are structured very similarly to the NBME subject exam and provide an excellent self-assessment on your performance as you prepare for the NBME exam. You are not being graded on percentage correct – this is just to facilitate learning.

Upload a screenshot of your transcript to Canvas by 11:59pm on Sunday following the NBME exam.

Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX)
The Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise is a formative (not graded!) instrument for your own personal growth, intended to provide you with real-time feedback of patient care competencies through an observed patient encounter.

You are required to complete 2 of these over the course of the rotation. These can be completed with an attending physician, resident physician, or APRN/APP.

The Mini-CEX form is appended to the end of this document.

Required Assignments
Completion of all required assignments comprises 4% of the total clerkship grade. Incompletion of required assignments results in a 1% deduction each.

For your convenience, below is a checklist of required assignments which MUST be turned in to Heather Ellis by 11:59pm on Sunday following the NBME exam.

• Update patient logs (screenshot)
• Two 50-item uWise comprehensive quiz (OB, Gyn) transcripts
• Formative Feedback form, including SMART goals completed after formative feedback session
• Mini-CEX x2
• P-MEX x2
• Labor and delivery scavenger hunt (Note: to chart content is optional, bottom chart content is required)
• Return borrowed materials (suture kit, Beckmann text)
• Attendance at clerkship debriefing on the last Thursday of the rotation (Nothing to turn in)
• Submit list of faculty, residents, APPs with whom you worked to Heather for New Innovations evaluations, to be done by the 3-week midpoint of the clerkship and at the completion of the clerkship
• Clerkship Qualtrics survey

Patient Logs

The experiences below are covered during this clerkship and are required for graduation. Record every encounter, real and simulated, for required clinical experiences covered in OBGYN (see list below). CBCs count as case-based discussion. This information is for College of Medicine monitoring purposes only and will not affect your evaluation; however, Academic Honesty Guidelines require that you do this accurately.

Please notify Ms. Ellis if you are missing any of these at the end of week 5 to determine an alternative experience. Failure to do so will result in a lower portfolio score, and you may have to make up for that experience in the fourth year.

Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEX)
The Mini Clinical Evaluation Exercise is a formative (not graded!) instrument for your own personal growth, intended to provide you with real-time feedback of patient care competencies through an observed patient encounter.

You are required to complete 2 of these over the course of the rotation. These can be completed with an attending physician, resident physician, or APRN/APP.

The Mini-CEX form is appended to the end of this document.

APRN/PA/RN/Genetic Counselor Evaluation
We strive to obtain a 360-degree evaluation of your performance to most accurately and fairly assess your performance during the clerkship. Therefore, you are expected to turn in paper evaluation forms to your educators when you are assigned to the following activities: Genetics, ARNP, RN and PAs in Gainesville. You should print the form before one of these assignments. Include the date, your name, your assignment, and your evaluator’s name. At the conclusion of the assignment, please give the evaluation form to your educator.

The Genetics/APRN/PA form is appended to the end of this document.

Formative Feedback Form
Formalized formative feedback will be given via a one-on-one session at the end of the third week of the clerkship. The goal of this exercise is to reflect on your performance and tailor your personal program of learning as you progress to the second half of the clerkship (and beyond). Please also refer to the section on formative feedback later in this document for more information.

As part of this process, you will first complete the self-assessment in advance of the session. This is the only form you should use. On the designated day, you will bring the formative feedback self-assessment to your meeting with the Clerkship Director for review.

After your meeting, you will submit two SMART goals to the Clerkship Director. The goal of this exercise is to reflect on your performance and tailor your personal program of learning as you progress to the second half of the clerkship (and beyond).

The self-assessment form including SMART goal instructions are appended to the end of this document.

Professionalism Mini Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX)

The Professionalism Mini Evaluation Exercise (P-MEX) is an instrument used to assess professionalism in clinical training. The evaluator rates the trainee on 24 different directly observable items of medical professionalism over four different skill areas: doctor-patient relationship skills, reflective skills, time management, and interprofessional relationship skills.

You will be required to obtain the following over the course of the rotation:

• 2 to be completed by a faculty or resident with whom you closely work. You will solicit these on-demand, which will be aimed at providing real-time formative assessment
• IM/OB/Peds/Surg 1 peer evaluation, which the clerkship administrative team will assign to a peer with whom you work closely on one of your core inpatient teams
• Up 1 from the clerkship coordinator. The administrative team will assign these such that you receive two over the course of the year.

Clerkship and instructor evaluations

COM policy on student evaluations:

• Each student must complete at least 75% of all assigned faculty, resident, and small group leader evaluation forms associated with a course/clerkship in each year of enrollment. There is an expectation of 100% completion on overall course and clerkship evaluations.
• Every student is expected to respond in a professional manner to each item which she/he feels qualified to answer.
• Strict confidentiality of responses is assured. Evaluation data (numerical ratings and student comments) is de-identified. However, the completion of evaluations will be tracked.

On-Demand Evaluations

Clerkships now offer on-demand evaluations in New Innovations, giving you the ability to request evaluations directly from the faculty and residents you work with. You’ll be able to choose who evaluates you, generate the evaluation request yourself, and New Innovations will immediately send them a prompt to complete it. (On the faculty/resident side, the evaluation form will look the same—it will just arrive sooner.)
This system is designed to help you receive more timely and meaningful feedback, since you can request an evaluation shortly after working with someone, rather than relying on evaluations submitted at the end of the rotation, often weeks later.
Each clerkship will provide guidance on how many evaluations you are expected to initiate and when you should submit these requests. Clerkships may also continue to initiate evaluations on your behalf when needed.
If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to your course administrator. For technical issues with New Innovations evaluations, contact Michael Bruce.

Recommended Textbook

“Beckmann and Ling’s Obstetrics and Gynecology, 9th ed”. 2023. Casanova R, Goepfert A, Hueppchen NA, Connolly M. ISBN 9781975180577

Students are strongly encouraged to use Beckmann as an adjunct to other resources for learning the content, based on two significant rationales. One, the book is written in partnership with APGO and is mapped exactly to the Medical Student Educational Objectives, with each chapter linked to the corresponding educational objective number and CBC topic number. Second, because the content within our specialty is less familiar than on other clerkships, it is helpful to have an orientation to the material from a source specifically written to the level of the third-year med student.

Mid-Clerkship Formative Feedback

Formalized formative feedback will be given via a one-on-one session at the end of the third week of the clerkship. First, you should complete the self-assessment. This is the only form you should use. On the designated day, you will bring the formative feedback self-assessment to your meeting with the Clerkship Director for review.

Because formative feedback is meant to provide you with information to improve your clinical skills, we will work to identify weaknesses for focused improvement.

After your meeting, you will submit two SMART goals to the Clerkship Director. The goal of this exercise is to reflect on your performance and tailor your personal program of learning as you progress to the second half of the clerkship (and beyond).

The self-assessment form including SMART goal instructions are appended to the end of this document.

Other Ways to Get Useful Formative Feedback

1. If the feedback you get is too general, ask for specifics: For example, in response to “Your progress notes should be longer.” you could ask if any particular section is most in need of expansion, or ask your attending/resident to review a couple notes with you and point out other information that should have been included.
2. If a clinic is ending and you have not yet received any feedback, ask for some: You are most likely to get useful feedback if your request is specific. In response to a question like “How am I doing?” you are likely to get a bland, general response like “Just fine.” If instead, you ask which area you should pay the most attention to improving, you are much more likely to get useful feedback. You could also ask for feedback on how you are doing in one area, such as obtaining the history of the chief complaint, etc.
3. Recognize the informal feedback you receive: Informal feedback is given continuously in all settings. It is your instructor’s verbal comments about such things as your behavior, answers to questions, history obtained, progress notes, etc. It will rarely be labeled as feedback but should be recognized as such and you should use it to improve your performance. If you are not sure what a comment means, then you should ask for clarification.
4. Take advantage of the feedback that is offered: Be receptive to and try to apply the suggestions you receive. During future clinic sessions, ask how you are progressing in the areas you discussed.
5. Do not be misled by illusionary feedback: It is important to distinguish true formative feedback from illusionary feedback. This is the warm, fuzzy feeling you get because everyone smiles and seems to be responding positively to you. While the opposite feeling is usually a good sign that your performance is unsatisfactory, this positive feeling may have no correlation with your actual evaluation. It is NOT valid feedback. Do not rely on this as an indicator of how well you are doing.

Assessment

Professionalism
Students are evaluated on the following professionalism domains:

• Honesty
• Motivation and excellence
• Work ethics and dependability
• Respectfulness
  Professionalism is graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis and does not contribute to the final grade composition in a numeric fashion.
  
  

Clinical Competency Evaluations
You should expect to be evaluated by those faculty, residents, and APPs who have had meaningful interactions with you; and conversely, you should expect you will not be evaluated by those who cannot assess your performance meaningfully. Note that any single evaluation may evaluate you on only some clinical competencies but not others.

Below are the clinical competencies and the descriptive anchors provided to all evaluators to facilitate evaluation.

NBME Examination

There is no minimum score required to pass the clerkship. However, those who score below the 10th percentile nationally are encouraged to reach out to the clerkship director to discuss whether a test taking remediation plan should be developed. Those scoring below the 5th percentile are required to do so.

Oral Examination
Purpose
• To evaluate the ability of each student to present in an organized and clear fashion a few select cases in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
• To evaluate the ability of each student to understand and discuss the pathophysiology, diagnostic evaluation, differential diagnosis, and treatment of a few select cases.
• To test the reasoning skills of the student.

Structure
The oral examination will be administered during the final week of the clerkship. The exact time and location are subject to change. The student will prepare six written cases and must submit the case list electronically to the examiner and the Clerkship Coordinator 24 hours prior to the examination. You may use your case list as notes, but no other notes will be permitted. You may not keep extensive notes on your case list. Your case list must be brief and contain only basic information. It should not exceed one page. A faculty member will examine each student based on the cases presented but may also use cases to segue into related topics. Clearly, students should be well-informed and familiar with their own cases and should have done sufficient study to have developed a sound general knowledge base.

The purpose of the oral examination is to evaluate the student’s ability to present clinical knowledge in a well-organized, succinct, and cogent manner. It allows the faculty to evaluate the student’s skill in developing and narrowing down a differential diagnosis. It is a way for the faculty to assess your ability to integrate your knowledge of women’s health into clinical situations. It is not intended to test a student’s memory of how each case was handled. Good presentation skills are the hallmark of a good clinician and demonstrate a high level of understanding and confidence. It is important that students learn these skills quickly. You will be called upon during postgraduate training and throughout your professional careers to present and discuss clinical data in an informed way.

Organization of Case Lists

• • Each student will prepare a brief synopsis for each of 6 cases in a specific format (see form). Students should list cases from the patients they have evaluated and treated during the Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship.
• • Each case list should include six cases: two obstetric cases, two gynecology cases, and two cases from the ambulatory practice (either obstetrics or gynecology). Obstetric cases should typically be based on patients you cared for in the hospital. Gynecology cases should typically be cases you saw in the OR.
• • The case list is limited to one page. Just include the basics. Do not include every single piece of data you gathered.
• • If you are uncertain as to the types of cases to include or would like feedback on your case list, you may email it one week in advance to Dr. Bruggeman for review.
• • An example of a well-prepared case list is appended to the end of this document.

Structure of the Examination

• Each student will have a 20-minute oral examination with a faculty member.
• Students may bring a copy of their case list (1 page) but no other notes or materials to the oral examination.
• The faculty examiner will ask the student to make an approximately 3-minute presentation on a case.
  • In general, you should present the patient in the form of an H&P. This means it should include CC, HPI, PMH/PSH/OBGYN Hx, exam, assessment, and plan. The presentation should be tailored to the clinical situation, tell a story, and inform the listener as if they are just hearing about the patient for the first time.
  • You must be prepared to provide a thorough yet concise oral presentation in this time frame… this can be challenging, so we recommend practicing (without memorizing a script)!
• A 7-8-minute question and answer period will follow. The question-and-answer period will focus on the risk factors, pathophysiology, differential diagnosis, diagnostic evaluation including laboratory tests and imaging studies, and treatment options.
• The faculty member will then ask you to present a second case (2-3 minutes), which will be followed by a question-and-answer period (7-8 minutes).
• The faculty members will provide you with feedback afterwards, but not your final oral exam evaluation.

Grading

• The oral examination will comprise 20% of your clerkship grade
• Students are graded based on the organization, timing, and content of the presentation including a thoughtful assessment and plan; knowledge of the topic and related subject matter; and ability to think critically to develop and refine a differential diagnosis and discuss treatment options
• The oral exam evaluation form is appended to the end of this document.

Required Assignments
Completion of all required assignments comprises 10% of the total clerkship grade. Incompletion of required assignments results in a 1% deduction each.

For your convenience, a checklist of required assignments is provided earlier in this document. Items requiring submission MUST be turned in to Heather Ellis by 11:59pm on the Sunday following the NBME exam.

Board of Governors Attestation Regarding Clerkship Instructional Materials
Instructional materials for this course consist of materials reviewed, selected, and assigned by the instructor(s). The instructor(s) is only responsible for these instructional materials. Based on self-assessment of learning needs, students may identify other credible resources to augment the identification, analysis, and synthesis of relevant information.

• Attendance Policy for Required Educational Activities
• Absence Request Process & Guidelines

COLLEGE OF MEDICINE POLICIES AND PROCEDURES HANDBOOK

The following topics are covered in the College of Medicine Policies and Procedures Handbook