Program Areas
Clinical Education
AHEC Rotations provide health profession students a broad range of practice experiences in a supportive, professional community. These rotations take place in small cities or rural locations and sometimes in underserved communities in Baltimore City. Students are assigned to preceptors/clinical instructors either by their program liaison or by the clinical education coordinator. The program addresses the advantages and challenges of providing health services to a rural community through a variety of experiences including interdisciplinary opportunities and community service.
Dentistry
The Community Service Learning Externship Program (CSLEP)
CSLEP is a three-week clinical experience performed outside of the dental school and is intended to provide senior dental students with an appreciation for cultural diversity as well as first-hand clinical experience attending to the oral health needs of underserved populations. Students select a clinical site and are assigned a preceptor who is responsible for guiding students’ clinical procedures during the externship with the goals of improving clinical skills, increasing self-confidence, and expanding knowledge of oral health care issues.
Dental Hygiene
Senior dental hygiene students perform 90 hours of community service in the fall and 45 hours in the spring of their senior years. Students volunteer and provide care at sites throughout the State of Maryland under the supervision of faculty or designated mentors. Community service engages students with diverse populations and immerses them in unique and heterogeneous cultures. The sites students visit often target underserved populations and students strive to improve oral health literacy and promote the overall well-being of those treated. Through volunteerism, students experience enhanced self-confidence, develop a stronger understanding of pressing oral health issues, improve their clinical skills and learn that health professionals have an ethical obligation to give back to their communities.
Medicine
Fourth-year medical students participate in four-week rotations in various counties of the state. During these rotations medical students are assigned a preceptor for job shadowing. Recently, the School of Pharmacy has begun a pilot program for its first year students on the Eastern Shore. This enables students to see what clinical rotations will involve later in their education process while introducing them to the Eastern Shore as a possible rotation and employment site in the future.
Pharmacy
The Experiential Learning Program (ELP)
ELP strives to develop in each student pharmacist the professional judgment and competencies needed to skillfully perform the functions and meet the responsibilities of a pharmacist in a wide range of practice environments. Preceptors are an important asset to the School of Pharmacy. Experiential learning accounts for more than 30 percent of the PharmD curriculum and includes introductory and advanced pharmacy practice experiences (IPPEs and APPEs). In the final year in the program, a student is immersed in the "real world" on rotations with practicing pharmacists and other health care professionals in a variety of practice settings including community pharmacies, hospitals, long-term care facilities, government/regulatory agencies, and private entities across the mid-Atlantic region and worldwide.
Social Work
Continuing Education
The Maryland AHEC Program Office and Centers offer a wide variety of continuing education programs focused on health disparities, cancer, clinical trials and other issues of particular relevance to the communities.
Health Careers
The aim of the program is to develop health career opportunities and promotes to students of all ages the choice of health care as a potential and desirable career. We work in partnership with the area's guidance counselors and school administrators, colleges and universities, and regional health care professionals and personnel at health care institutions.