The Ruth L. Gottesman Clinical Skills Center, located in Van Etten, meets the educational needs of Einstein’s medical school students as a resource for the teaching as well as the assessment of clinical skills. Throughout their education, physicians-in-training need a safe and supportive environment to learn, practice, and receive feedback on the clinical skills that are essential to the practice of medicine.
Simulated and Standardized Patients
As part of Einstein’s mission to educate and assess the skills of medical students, the faculty collaborates with professionally trained actors for both formative teaching sessions (simulated patients) as well as clinical skills assessments (standardized patients). These highly trained professionals assist Einstein faculty in the pre-clerkship Introduction to Clinical Medicine course and clinical clerkships.
During their Medicine clerkship rotation, students participate in an innovative educational experience called a Group Observed Structured Clinical Exam (GOSCE), where students work together to address patients’ medical problems.
Other clerkships, Family Medicine and Pediatrics, use individual OSCE’s with simulated patients that enable students to gain experience in situations specific to each of these disciplines.
Clinical Skills Assessment
The largest OSCE at the Clinical Skills Center is the clinical skills assessment (CSA) exam, which all Einstein students must take at the end of their third year. This exam is similar in design to the former USMLE Step 2 CS exam, and covers content areas in all the major clerkships. In addition to a diagnostic challenge, each case also includes a psychosocial component, which poses an interpersonal or communication challenge.