Become a Preceptor
Thank you for your interest in teaching our medical students! There are several ways to serve as a community preceptor at UNC School of Medicine:
Patient Centered Care (PCC) Clinical Week: First and Second Year Medical Students
The Patient Centered Care course is designed to enable students to learn the core clinical skills—History-Taking, Physical Examination, Communication, Clinical Reasoning, Patient-Centered Care and Professionalism— necessary for future patient care.
PCC Clinical Week Preceptors play an important role in the clinical training and mentoring of our 1st and 2nd year medical students. Under the supervision of their clinical preceptors, students practice their newly developing skills in interviewing, physical examination and presenting. For many students these clinical rotations will mark the first time they have had “hands on” experiences with real patients.
As a token of appreciation for their service, preceptors are given adjunct faculty appointments to the UNC School of Medicine and access to the AHEC digital library (ADL). The ADL includes journals and textbooks, databases such as MEDLINE and electronic clinical resource tools.
If you know of a North Carolina primary care physician that you’d like to recommend to participate as a UNC Medical school preceptor, please contact Community Preceptor Liaison, Gina Horne at gina_horne@med.unc.edu or 919-966-0589.
Community Based Primary Care (CBPC): Third year medical students
CBPC is an 8-week outpatient medicine course for third-year medical students. Students rotate approximately three to four days a week at an adult outpatient medicine clinic (family or internal). Throughout the 8 weeks, students also participate in teaching sessions led by course faculty, some will spend time in subspecialty clinics, and all complete weekend Emergency Medicine shifts.
Pediatrics: Third year medical students
Pediatrics is an 8-week course consisting of inpatient and outpatient pediatrics. Students are assigned to campuses/hospitals across the state including NC Women’s Hospital and NC Children’s Hospital at UNC Chapel Hill, Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, Novant Health Hemby Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, or Mission Hospital in Asheville.
The exact breakdown may vary among campuses, but students will essentially spend 4 weeks in the inpatient setting and 4 weeks in the outpatient setting. For students rotating at the Chapel Hill campus outpatient pediatrics consists of 3 weeks spent in a primary care pediatric office and 1 week of pediatric subspecialty and newborn nursery experiences.
Preceptors in the pediatric primary care setting typically work with students for a total of 10-12 days during the 3 outpatient weeks of the rotation. Precepting responsibilities can be shared amongst a group of preceptors in the same office. Scheduling is flexible with the opportunity for students to participate in subspecialty experiences on any day that the primary care preceptor is unavailable.
Benefits to working with CBPC and Peds students:
- Financial support
- Adjunct Faculty Appointment with UNC
- Access to Teaching Physicians subscription (online bank of teaching resources)
- Access to UNC library resources
- Teaching Certificate from UNC
- Student mentorship/impact
Please contact Karlie Briggs (karlie_briggs@med.unc.edu) or Andi Corona (andrea_corona@med.unc.edu) if you are interested in learning more about becoming a CBPC or Peds preceptor!