Judith Gore Gearhart Clinical Skills Center

Founded in 2004, the Judith Gore Gearhart Clinical Skills Center (CSC) is a dedicated education facility used for assessing physical exam skills, conducting standardized patient exams, and administering Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) for medical students, residents, and other learners. It conducts assessment activities for most of the schools at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC), including Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, Dentistry, and Health Related Professions. A critical component to the education mission, the CSC boasts a remarkable surge in usage over the last three years with learner engagement nearly doubling from 6,559 in FY2020 to 11,458 in FY2023. This growth is mirrored in a 40% increase in learner hours.

The CSC supports the School of Medicine’s (SOM) centralized system for assessment of student achievement (knowledge, core clinical skills, behaviors, and attitudes), an accreditation requirement of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) by offering one of many assessment methods. Each medical student completes two cases for each of the six core clerkships at the end of clerkship as well as a final exam at the end of the third year. Passage of this final exam is a requirement for promotion to the fourth year of the medical education program. These assessments, using simulated patients, allow the SOM to ensure that each medial student has achieved competency in history-taking, physical exams, clinical reasoning, patient communication, and written documentation. While these are significant assessments, they occur alongside assessments within the clerkships.

Simulated patients are individuals trained to portray a specific patient case or patient scenario in a consistent manner allowing for the assessment of the medical student’s history-taking, physical exam, clinical reasoning, patient communication, and written documentation skills.