Clerkship

During their third and fourth year of podiatric medical training, students are typically required to participate in clinical sciences and patient care judgment. Visit the Podiatric Education section for more information on the curriculum for podiatric medicine programs. Part of this educational is experience is clerkships or clinical rotations.

Clerkships are three to four week rotations (40 hours per week) in a hospital or ambulatory surgery center. Students are observe and participate in basic podiatric procedures as outlined in their clerkship and approved by their college or institution. Clerkships expose students to all facets of podiatric medicine and surgery in the hospital, professional office, and clinical setting. The clerk gains essential experience managing the care of patients and learning the roles and responsibilities of the DPM. They also witness first-hand the DPM’s interaction with other health-care professionals.

Clerkships are approved by the academic council of each college that allows its third and fourth year students to participate. Approved clerkships provide a schedule, goals, and objectives and/or a protocol procedure for each rotation to the college. At least one DPM from the clerkship program must submit a CV for adjunct clinical faculty appointment. All programs must submit an evaluation sheet for each clerk and all clerks complete an evaluation sheet for the program.

The Clerkship Schedule establishes the timeline for each podiatric clerkship cycle of program registration, student application and program selection, and offer and acceptance rounds.

• 2023 Clerkship Schedule with Modified Rounds

The 2023 cycle schedules clerkships to be served from January 2022 through May 2023.

The DPMClerkships website is where programs register, review applications, and rank students for offers. Students use the site to complete their applications and select programs and the months for their clerkships. DPMClerkships schedules clerkships by offer and acceptance between programs and students.

• AACPM DPMClerkships website

The Clerkship Handbook is a comprehensive listing of podiatric medicine clerkships and contain detailed content on each clerkship program to aid students in the clerkship application and selection process.

• 2023 Clerkship Handbook sortable

The 2023 Clerkship Handbook is published at the end of program registration. Refer to the above 2023 Clerkship Schedule for the date of first publication.

National Clerkship Calendars (standardized start and end dates of rotations)

The National Clerkship Calendar is used to standardize the start dates of clerkship rotations across all the podiatric medical colleges.

• 2021-2025 National Clerkship Calendar

• College Clerkship Coordinators