A Scholarly spin on practice: the impact of longitudinal integrated clerkships on the development of academic scholarship in general clinical practice

All senior medical students at the University of Wollongong in Australia undertake a longitudinal integrated community-based clerkship in a regional or rural community. In addition to continuity of patient care and curriculum, the clerkship offers each student individualized professional development by experienced generalist practitioners. These practitioners predicted outcomes from their relationship with the long-term students, including a more scholarly approach to clinical practice (1). In 1990, Boyer outlined the concept of four domains of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching (2). More recently, a working definition of clinical scholarship in academic medicine has been proposed 930. This paper describes the development of a culture of academic scholarship amongst clinician preceptors supervising long-term clinical clerkship students in their community.