Medical Education > Jefferson's Patient Encounter Log System (PELS)

Jefferson's Patient Encounter Log System (PELS)

The decentralization of clinical teaching networks requires a systematic way of documenting medical students' clinical and educational experiences across clerkships. In addition to being one of the LCME accreditation standards, this information is important for assuring the quality of our clinical affiliation network, for clerkship planning, and for helping students and faculty assess individual student clinical experiences. The PALM-based Jefferson PELS system was fully implemented in the 2003-2004 academic year in all core third-year clinical clerkships and in the emergency medicine fourth-year clerkship. Students and faculty can review a summary of each student's experiences, compared to clerkship-specific targets, at the push of a button. Center staff, collaborating with the senior associate dean, undergraduate medical education, Jeff-IT, and the clinical clerkship directors, are instrumental in the design, operation, and continuing improvement of PELS. (More information about PELS is available at: Jefferson PULSE/Organizations/JMC PELS Users.)

Selected Publications:

Rattner SL, Louis DZ, Rabinowitz C, Gottlieb J, Nasca TJ, Markham FW, Gottlieb RP, Caruso JW, Lane JL, Veloski JJ, Hojat M, Gonnella JS. Documenting and comparing medical students' clinical experiences. JAMA 2001; 286 (9):1035-1040.

Louis DZ, Gottlieb J, Markham FW, Hojat M, Rabinowitz C, Gonnella JS. Students' gender and examination of patients in a third-year family medicine clerkship. Academic Medicine, 1996; 71(10) Suppl:S19-S21.