University of California San Francisco
UCSF School of Medicine UCSF Medical Center

MD Program Objectives

The MD program objectives are the graduation milestones for the UCSF School of Medicine. Upon graduation from the UCSF MD Program, students are required to have demonstrated competence in the competencies listed below. For each competency, a set of milestones defines the expected progress throughout medical school toward achieving competence. 

For students in the Bridges Curriculum (students entering in Fall 2016 or later)

Patient Care

Graduates will be able to:

  • Gather complete and focused histories from patients, families, and electronic health records in an organized manner, appropriate to the clinical situation and the individual, interpersonal, and structural factors that impact health
  • Conduct complete and focused physical exams, using technology-enhanced physical diagnosis tools where appropriate, interpreting abnormalities and maintaining patient comfort
  • Present encounters efficiently, including relevant gathered information, assessment, and plan
  • Document patient encounters accurately, efficiently, and promptly including independent authorship for reporting of information, assessment, and plan  
  • Perform common procedures safely and correctly, including participating in obtaining informed consent, following universal precautions and sterile technique, and attending to patient comfort   
  • Manage patients as part of a team, including prioritizing patient care tasks efficiently to provide high-quality care that addresses their medical and social needs 

Medical Knowledge

Graduates will be able to:

  • For the UCSF 49, establish and maintain knowledge necessary for the preventive care, diagnosis, treatment, and management of medical problems
  • Through an inquiry-oriented and analytic approach to learning and patient care, develop and implement approaches for generating and applying new knowledge, including an individual course of study that emphasizes inquiry, discovery, and dissemination 
  • For the UCSF 49, select, justify, and interpret diagnostic tests and imaging
  • For the UCSF 49, diagnose and explain clinical problems  
  • Use electronic decision support tools to inform clinical reasoning and decision making
  • For the UCSF 49, select and apply basic preventive, curative, and/or palliative therapeutic strategies  

Practice-Based Learning & Improvement

Graduates will be able to:

  • Locate, appraise, and apply evidence from scientific studies related to patients’ health needs   
  • Critically reflect on one's own performance to identify strengths and challenges; reflect on and address the impact that personal biases, identity, and privilege have on interactions and decision-making; set learning and improvement goals; and engage in learning activities that address one’s gaps in knowledge, skills, and/or attitudes 
  • Employ strategies for seeking, receiving, acting upon, and delivering feedback, and contribute to a culture of openness to and appreciation of feedback

Interpersonal & Communication Skills

Graduates will be able to:

  • Communicate effectively in interpersonal and electronic communications with patients, families, peers, and other team members of diverse backgrounds, languages, cultures, and communities using strategies to build alliances, promote inclusion and equity, and ensure patient, peer, or other team members’ understanding
  • Demonstrate sensitivity, honesty, and compassion in difficult conversations with patients and families    
  • Share and elicit information and negotiate management plans using shared decision making with patients and their families
  • Anticipate, interpret, and respond to one’s own and others’ emotions to manage interpersonal interactions effectively

Professionalism

Graduates will be able to:

  • Form relationships with patients, families, and colleagues that demonstrate sensitivity and responsiveness to how others define their culture, race/ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, spirituality, disabilities, and other aspects of diversity and identity   
  • Demonstrate respect, compassion, honesty, and integrity when interacting with patients, families, colleagues, and teams
  • Balance the needs of patients and healthcare team with one's own needs
  • Recognize the need for additional help or supervision and seek it accordingly
  • Demonstrate accountability and reliability, including initiative, responsiveness, and follow-through, in interactions with patients, families, and colleagues in interpersonal and electronic communications, including electronic health records
  • Practice with a commitment to ethical principles, social justice, and societal needs, including maintaining patient confidentiality, responding to medical errors and healthcare disparities, respecting patient autonomy, maintaining appropriate boundaries, and using electronic communications, including social media, appropriately
  • Adhere to institutional, regulatory, and professional standards and administrative expectations; personal, patient, and public safety; adhere  to principles of ethical research; and manage conflicts of interest  
  • Demonstrate healthy coping mechanisms to respond to stress, including using resources to promote wellness and maintain professional behavior 
  • Demonstrate ongoing commitment to one's own professional identity formation as a physician accountable to patients, society, and the profession

Systems-Based Practice

Graduates will be able to:

  • Collaborate to coordinate patient care within and across healthcare systems, including patient hand-offs
  • Participate in a systematic approach to promote patient safety
  • Participate in continuous improvement in a clinical setting, utilizing a systematic and team-oriented approach to improve the quality and value of care for patients and populations  
  • Apply understanding of current and historical factors affecting health equity, including structural inequalities in access to and quality of health care, to improve the health of patients and communities

Interprofessional Collaboration

Graduates will be able to:

  • Use the knowledge of one’s own role in different teams and settings and the roles of other health professionals to assess and address the healthcare needs of patients and populations
  • Communicate with other health professionals in a responsive and responsible manner that supports a collaborative approach to the maintenance of health and the treatment of disease in patients and populations 
  • Work with other health professionals to establish and maintain a climate of mutual respect, dignity, diversity, ethical integrity, and trust 

 

For students in Essential Core, Core Clerkships, and Advanced Studies (students entering prior to 2016)

Patient Care

Graduates will be able to:

  • Gather complete and focused histories in an organized fashion, appropriate to the clinical situation and specific population
  • Conduct relevant, complete, and focused physical examinations
  • Present encounters including reporting of information and development of an assessment and plan efficiently and accurately
  • Document encounters including reporting of information and development of an assessment and plan efficiently and accurately
  • Perform common procedures safely and correctly with attention to patient's comfort
  • Follow universal precautions and sterile technique
  • Demonstrate confidence and efficacy with the primary provider role in the acute and ambulatory settings and the provision of longitudinal care
  • Manage and prioritize patient care tasks for a group of patients
  • Anticipate patients’ needs, conduct discharge planning, and create individualized disease management and/or prevention plans including patient self-management and behavior change

Medical Knowledge

Graduates will be able to:

  • Establish and maintain knowledge necessary for the preventive care, diagnosis, treatment, and management of medical problems
  • Demonstrate curiosity, objectivity, and the use of scientific reasoning in acquisition of knowledge, and in applying it to patient care
  • Select, justify and interpret diagnostic clinical tests and imaging
  • Diagnose and explain clinical problems  
  • Select and apply basic preventive, curative, and/or palliative therapeutic strategies for the management of clinical conditions  
  • Contribute to the development, application, and translation of new medical knowledge through scholarly inquiry, discovery, and dissemination

Practice-Based Learning & Improvement

Graduates will be able to:

  • Use information technology to access online medical information, manage information, and assimilate evidence from scientific studies in patient care
  • Identify clinical questions as they emerge in patient care activities and identify and apply evidence relevant to answering those questions
  • Appraise and assimilate the scientific evidence from the literature and apply it to clinical decision making for individual patients
  • Apply evidence-based medicine to improve the care of individual patients and populations
  • Critically reflect on one's own performance to identify strengths and challenges, set individual learning and improvement goals, and engage in appropriate learning activities to meet those goals
  • Employ strategies for seeking, incorporating, and delivering feedback
  • Document professional and personal development in relation to the UCSF MD competency milestones

Interpersonal & Communication Skills

Graduates will be able to:

  • Establish collaborative and constructive relationships with patients and families
  • Communicate effectively with patients and families of diverse background and cultures
  • Effectively and empathetically discuss serious, sensitive, and difficult topics
  • Share information and negotiate treatment plans with patients and their families
  • Elicit and address patients' concerns, needs and preferences and incorporate them into management plans
  • Communicate effectively with diverse patients and ensure patient understanding
  • Present patient information efficiently in an organized, accurate, and logical fashion appropriate for the clinical situation, including assessment and plan
  • Communicate oral and written clinical information that accurately and efficiently summarizes patient data
  • Communicate effectively and respectfully with all members of the interprofessional team involved in a patient's care

Professionalism

Graduates will be able to:

  • Form doctor-patient relationships demonstrating sensitivity and responsiveness to culture, race/ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, spirituality, disabilities, and other aspects of diversity and identity, and advocate for care for the underserved
  • Demonstrate respect, compassion, accountability, dependability, and integrity when interacting with peers, interprofessional healthcare providers, patients, and families
  • Be responsive to the needs of patients and society and appropriately balance these needs with one's own
  • Show accountability and reliability in interactions with patients, families, and other health professionals
  • Practice ethically and with integrity, including maintaining patient confidentiality, obtaining appropriate informed consent, and responding to medical errors
  • Adhere to institutional and professional standards and regulation for personal, patient and public safety, adhere to principles of ethical research, and manage conflicts of interest

Systems-Based Practice

Graduates will be able to:

  • Participate effectively as a member of the healthcare team with physicians and interprofessional healthcare providers
  • Understand basic principles of healthcare delivery, organization and finance, how costs affect healthcare delivery, and incentives methods for controlling costs
  • Use a systems approach to identify healthcare systems and quality gaps and to develop solutions