Goals and Objectives

Educational Goal

Students will be able to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required of an effective clinician with regard to health promotion and disease prevention in the care of patients and communities.

Medical Knowledge

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Name the major causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States, based on age and gender, and the important modifiable risk factors for each.[1]
  2. Describe how the characteristics of individuals and populations (e.g., age, gender, language, religious beliefs, income, education, culture, race, ethnicity, and lifestyle) may affect the occurrence of disease and the provision and utilization of health services.[1]
  3. Summarize the goals of Healthy People 2020 initiative.[1]
  4. Identify primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies as applied in clinical care.
  5. Apply the principles of behavioral change strategies to smoking cessation in patient care.[2]
  6. Assess an intervention to determine if it meets the standards of a good screening.
  7. Define and interpret measures that describe the burden of disease in a population (e.g., incidence, prevalence, age-adjusted rates, case fatality rates, life expectancy.[1]
  8. Define and apply the principles of quantitative epidemiology (e.g., sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, validity, and reliability) to diagnostic and screening tests.[1]
  9. Apply the commonly used measures of association (e.g., relative and attributable risk, odds ratio, number needed to treat, number needed to screen, principles of cause and effect) to a preventive medicine research study scenario.[1]
  10. Formulate the recommendations for the following clinical preventive services based on a patient’s age, gender, and risk factor status:[1]

A. Vaccines in adults: Influenza, Pneumococcal polysaccharide (PPSV23), MMR, Td/Tdap,  Zoster, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Meningococcal vaccine, Human papillomavirus (HPV).

B. The use of aspirin for primary prevention of vascular disease (chemoprophylaxis)

C. Screening tests commonly used in primary care

D. Prevention counseling of patients and their families using appropriate guidelines and online tools (e.g., U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice (ACIP) recommendations, or online cardiovascular risk calculators).

Patient Care

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate the communication skills required to directly provide appropriate, recommended clinical preventive services, including:[1]
    a. Obtain an appropriate patient history that includes occupation, environmental exposure, recent travel, psychosocial/sexual history, and substance use/abuse
    b. Perform appropriate screening tests
    c. Conduct prevention counseling (e.g. smoking cessation, weight loss)
    d. Counsel patients on immunizations listed above
    e. Counsel patients on chemoprophylaxis with aspirin.
  2. Use appropriate information technology to support clinical preventive service delivery and patient education in promoting health.[2]

Interpersonal and Communication Skills

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Counsel and educate patients and their families on the importance of health promotion and disease prevention.

Practice Based Learning and Improvement

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Describe features of health systems that promote the integration and utilization of disease prevention-health promotion services into clinical practice (e.g., use of reminder systems and online evidence-based guidelines for providers and consumers).[1]
  2. Access medical information to support self-education and clinical decision-making with the use of informational technologies.

Professionalism

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Demonstrate professionalism by completing this web module during the assigned period.

Systems Based Practice

At the conclusion of this module, the student will be able to:

  1. Identify the roles of various health care providers, interdisciplinary health care teams, consultation/referral sources, and community resources in providing clinical preventive services (e.g., use of dietician in weight loss, social worker in child abuse cases).[1]
  2. Identify the influences of access, utilization, and quality of services on health outcomes.[1]

Footnotes

1. Adapted from Pomrehn, P., Davis, M., Chen, D., Barker, W. “Prevention for the 21st Century: Setting the Context through Undergraduate Medical Education.” Acad Med. 2000; 75 (7 suppl): S5-S13

2. Adapted from the Society of Teacher of Family Medicine.

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