Penn State Hershey
        Medical Education

Primary Care Competencies

• Primary Care Competencies
  • Clinical Acumen
  • Interpersonal Skills
  • Organizational Skills/Practice Management
  • Understand the Practice of Primary Care
• Core Clerkship Topics
• Center For Primary Care
• AHEC

In the clinical years of medical education, students learn the practice of medicine in the "real world". However, variations in clerkship site, time of year, and luck of the draw contribute to a wide variation in the clinical experience. To help standardize clinical training, we have defined a set of core clerkship topics and clinical competencies for the primary care curriculum that should be mastered by all students at the completion of their medical education. We have begun to develop computer cases for these core clerkship topics, and will continue to add to this list. The goals of these cases/tutorials are to fill in gaps in the students’ experiences, to reinforce existing knowledge, and to refine problem-solving and clinical skills.