For Students

Principles of Primary Care Course
( OMS 1 & 2)

Family Medicine Clerkship Requirements
(3rd Year)

Russell C. Hendershot, D.O.,
MS, FAAFP

Discipline Chair,
Family Medicine
Department - Virginia Campus

Matthew D. Cannon, D.O.

Discipline Chair,
Family Medicine
Department - Carolinas Campus

Family Medicine is a field that is challenging and requires life-long learning skills. Medicine is constantly changing and the family physician must keep abreast of these changes in order to care for patients of all ages.
 The reward of family medicine is developing long term patient partnerships that allow the family physician time to see the patient back on to the road to health. The practice of Family Medicine allows the physician a relationship with families of all types and is the one field where the physician has the full satisfaction of being the complete physician—caring for the whole person, from birth to death. The practice of Family Medicine requires a strong sense of compassion sharing the sorrow, pain, fears, and joy of patients and their families throughout life. Family Medicine has unique distinction of providing continuity of care for the entire family. The VCOM mission and focus of preparing globally minded, community-focused physicians for rural and medically underserved areas is best met through family medicine. 

Family Medicine allows a physician to shape their career into a satisfying practice.  Family physicians may choose to care for all patients or may focus on a specific age group or patient group.  Family physicians may learn to perform a host of ambulatory office procedures that allow them to serve their patients well, including but not limited to dermatologic procedures, gynecological procedures, sports medicine, minor orthopedics, and endoscopy. In addition family medicine physicians may do choose to do obstetrics, pediatrics, and/or geriatrics as a focus within their practice.  Fellowships are available for family physicians who wish to enhance their clinical skills in these areas.

Family Medicine as well as other primary care discipline principles are taught throughout the four years on campus.  In years one and two, students participate in a course known as “Principles of Primary Care.”  This course incorporates communication skills, professionalism, physical diagnosis, differential diagnosis, and preventive medicine.  As a student these principles lay a foundation to become a strong, well rounded primary care physician, which is important not only to those practicing primary care but to those who will enter specialties.

In the second year, early patient engagement builds an understanding of how to apply the proper history and physical, the appropriate diagnostic evaluation tools, and critical thinking to reach an accurate diagnosis and to establish a treatment plan that will lead to recovery.

The Family Medicine faculty consider it an honor and privilege to help shape medical students into tomorrow’s physicians and this is a responsibility taken seriously.  The doors of our family medicine departments are always available to our students.