Orientation Overload: Best Practices for New Intern Continuity Clinic Orientation

Despite continuity clinic being a core requirement for all internal medicine residency programs, almost all new interns admit to feeling unfamiliar and unprepared to practice in an ambulatory setting as a new primary care physician. In fact, the continuity clinic experience often represents the steepest learning curve as new interns orient to clinic workflows, face ambulatory knowledge gaps, and develop strong patient-physician relationships. Orienting new interns to the continuity clinic can feel overwhelming for both interns experiencing the orientation and preceptors delivering the orientation materials. In this workshop, presenters will introduce an approach to intern orientation at two continuity clinic sites, each with different patient populations and support staff structures. The program offers bite-sized orientation modules, developed with the intention of transforming continuity clinic orientation from inundating information overload to manageable just-in-time curricula. Small group discussions will be used to share overall approaches to continuity clinic orientation, with a special focus on preparing new interns on the electronic medical record, community and clinic-based resources, multidisciplinary team care, direct observations, and health care maintenance/preventive care. Presenters will disseminate best practices from these discussions to enrich the clinic orientation experience for all participating programs. Participants of this workshop will leave with tangible orientation examples that can ultimately reduce that "firehose" feeling for both interns and preceptors alike.