Three student manuals for obstetric and gynecologic outpatient care

We have written three pocket manuals to facilitate the interaction between obstetric and gynecology patients and medical students, junior residents, and advanced practice nurses in an ambulatory care setting. The purposes of the manuals include the organization of the content of outpatient care into a consistent framework for interaction with the patient at each outpatient visit and the provision of a practical memory jogger to facilitate effective clinician-patient communication. Each visit contains specific and suggested content under the same five categories: questions to be asked of the patient, focused aspects of the physical examination, laboratory tests to order, topics for purposeful discussion, and sentences to close the visit. These learning tools were designed to be integrated by local faculty into the department's formal curriculum. They are intended to support training in ambulatory care. They now need to be evaluated prospectively at individual sites.