MS4 Catalog

Community/Rural Based Medicine

In order to fulfill the requirements for graduation from the West Virginia University School of  Medicine, all MD degree students must complete at least two four week blocks of non-campus based clinical rotations at West Virginia community sites. The practitioners providing the supervision must have faculty appointments within the School of Medicine.  The requirement is fulfilled with one four week block during the third year in the Family Medicine clerkship.  The second four week block may be fulfilled in any medical specialty during the fourth year.  No vacation or interview time can be taken during these rotations.

Rotations may be completed with students from other health professional schools in West Virginia including but not limited to the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine at Marshall University and the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, and students from the Schools of Dentistry, Nursing, Public Health, and Pharmacy of West Virginia University. This is a type of interprofessional learning experience since students will be working in teams on many of these rotations.

During a four week community based rotation it is expected that the student will be on duty for at least 20 days.  Students who fail to meet the 20 day requirement as described above will receive an incomplete and will be required to make up the missing time before academic credit can be awarded towards the requirements for the MD degree.  Variations from this expectation must be approved by the student's campus Associate Dean for Student Services.

Please refer to the syllabus in SOLE under CCMD-848: Community/Rural Based Medicine for learning objectives and grading rubric for the fourth year rotations. The family medicine syllabus will outline the expectations during that clerkship in the third year.

***Tracker is a scheduling and data collection system maintained in partnership by the WVU Institute for Community and Rural Health (ICRH) and WVU HSC Information Technology Services. Tracker provides tools for scheduling rural and community-based housing for students who, as part of their curriculum, travel away from their home campuses to learn and serve throughout West Virginia. Tracker also provides rural and community-based rotation scheduling tools for WVU School of Medicine. Tracker's tools include interfaces to request, approve/deny, verify, and initiate rotations and billing for housing. These tools serve students, campus users, housing managers, financial services personnel and administrators. Access to information is limited by user role to assure confidentiality.

Tracker access is available through SOLE and will be listed in the Courses and Sites panel for users who have been granted access to the application. Within Tracker, tools available to students include:

  • searching the lists of available sites and preceptors
  • viewing housing options, including Google map locations and photos of available units
  • viewing your list of community-based rotation and housing request(s) and their statuses
  • completing voluntary IRB-reviewed surveys related to ICRH grant efforts