What did we learn about the impact on students' clinical education?

Analysis of the impact of the Interdisciplinary Generalist Curriculum (IGC) Project would be incomplete without discussion of how it affected students ' clinical education. This article explores the impact of the IGC Project o n medical students' clinical education at the ten IGC schools. The schools typically lacked pre-IGC Project baseline data for comparison, although the y all collected data on the impact of the new curriculum on the clinical ed ucation of students. Measures included some objective indicators and variou s subjective measures of the perceptions of the students, faculty, and comm unity preceptors. The impact of curricular innovations at the IGC Project schools on students was immediate as they began to see patients early and continuously as part of their medical education. Students, faculty, and community preceptors wh o interacted with these students during their third year believed they were "different" because of their participation in the IGC. Not only did the IG C students approach patients with better integrated basic science knowledge , but also a different kind of student arrived at the third year, the tradi tional beginning of clinical experiences in medical education.