CUNY SOM Policy on Clinical Supervision

At the CUNY School of Medicine, we value the role of learners in providing excellent clinical care. We also embrace the educational principle of graded responsibility to maximally support learners in developing clinical expertise. We believe that appropriate supervision is critical to performing assessments of the learner and providing meaningful feedback.

CUNY School of Medicine students must be appropriately supervised when participating in required or elective clinical activities.

1. Medical students may not provide unsupervised care.

2. Supervisors must hold an affiliate faculty appointment or be supervised in their teaching and assessment role by affiliate faculty members that may include physicians, residents, fellows, and other licensed health professional faculty supervising an activity within their scope of expertise or practice.

3. Students may be supervised at one of two broad levels as determined by the supervisor:

a. Direct observation: the supervisor is present with the student and the patient

b. Immediately available indirect supervision: the supervisor, while not in the presence of the student and/or patient, is immediately available to the learner and/or at the site of care to provide direct supervision

4. Determination of appropriate level of supervision is made by the supervisor, based on many factors, including:

• Level of training of the student

• Previous experience and skill of the student with the clinical activity and setting

• Familiarity of the supervisor with the abilities of the student

• Acuity of activity and level of risk to patient

5. Students may not perform procedures without direct supervision by a team member who has been credentialed by the clinical site to perform that procedure

The Associate Dean for Clinical Medical Education, and the Clerkship Directors or Site Directors, are responsible for adherence to this policy