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Southern California University of Health Sciences (SCU) seeks to be an academic leader in the whole health movement. Whole health is living a full and meaningful life, empowered and equipped to address all aspects of well-being - mental, physical, and spiritual.
Whole health care prioritizes disease prevention, health, and well-being - as defined by the individual - over disease management. It prioritizes teams, trust, and longitudinal relationships to promote resilience, prevent disease, and restore health in alignment with a person’s life mission, aspiration, and purpose. The importance of reflection, self-awareness, meaning and purpose, healing, holism, experience, skill building, and support is integrated into the whole health care approach.
Within the developing context of Whole Health, SCU utilizes integrative healthcare and defines integrative healthcare as care consisting of four important factors:
- Whole-person approach. This means understanding that a person is more than their symptoms or chief complaint and that each person’s biology/symptoms, mental state, and social and environmental factors are important to their health and well-being.
- Evidence-informed practice. We approach healthcare considering the best available evidence to guide our decisions,
- Emphasis on the provider-person relationship. It is important for the supervising clinician, clinical student, and patient to work towards the goals of the patient as a team and for the supervising clinician and clinical student to understand they are there to serve the patient. The care team should be asking themselves not, “what is the matter with this patient?” but rather, “what matters to this patient?” and not “what can I do for this patient?” but rather, “what does this person want and need?”
- Use of all indicated clinical approaches and therapeutic techniques in an integrated manner. This means working with providers from across disciplines and from within and outside of SCU Health while considering patient time and expense, affording the patient the opportunity to achieve the best possible outcome. This approach to integrative health - informed by the SCU Model of Interprofessional Education - prepares students to work with providers from across disciplines in an integrated manner.
SCU emphasizes interprofessional interaction when caring for patients and clients in the licensed healthcare professions and among healthcare professionals. The University fosters an environment in which students from across the University can learn, study, work, socialize, and in many cases, treat patients together regardless of their chosen field of study. The University offers co-curricular programming, educational exercises and rounds, and clinical experiences in support of this goal. SCU supports competencies promulgated by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC). SCU strives to prepare graduates to function as a member of an interprofessional team and to excel in collaborative practice. The extent to which students participate in interprofessional education varies by program of study and degree level. https://www.scuhs.edu/Interprofessional-Education/
SCU clinical students may participate in clinical education in a variety of clinical settings. This Clinical Handbook and the policies within it - including the program specific clinical handbooks - are part of the University Catalog, and serve as a complement to program-specific handbooks and guidance as well as other university publications. The Clinical Handbook includes three sections:
- General policies, as discussed in Section II , apply to all SCU clinical students participating in all clinical settings; programs and sites may have stricter or additional guidance in Sections III and IV.
- SCU Health specific policies, as discussed in Section III , apply to all SCU clinical students participating in SCU’s owned and operated University Health Center (UHC), Foothill Regional Medical Center (FRMC), and Sports Medicine clinic (SM), often referred to collectively as SCU Health. Students should verify these with their programs.
- Program specific policies, provided in Section IV , apply to specific clinical students based upon their program of study. Programs may also have additional publications and guidance that also provide essential information..
Clinical settings require clinical students to adhere to university policies, site specific policies, and program specific policies. These requirements may include third-party payor requirements (which vary by site and by provider), malpractice insurer requirements, scope of training and scope of practice, and state laws governing clinical practice and clinical training. Clinical students are expected to familiarize themselves with and comply with all pertinent policies and procedures. This Clinical Handbook - and the associated program specific handbooks - is not intended to reflect all possible requirements in all possible settings in all programs. Rather, this handbook is intended as an overview of essential information for clinical students engaged in clinical education. Questions should always be directed to the Clinical Supervisor, Assistant Program Director/Clinical Director, or to the Program.
Throughout this Handbook and program clinical handbooks, the terms “clerk” and “clinical student” are used interchangeably when referring to an SCU student engaged in learning to interact with clients and patients in licensed healthcare professions, and apply in all settings where this education and training occur. Therefore, these terms also encompass students in fieldwork and fieldwork training, and related education and training at SCU for integrative healthcare practitioners and professionals.
The term “patient” includes clients and other similar parties, meaning those who are served by, evaluated, treated, monitored, and/or similarly interacted with during clinical training and care.
The term “supervising clinician” encompasses all clinicians, fieldwork practitioners, preceptors, and other similar professionals who are hired or affiliated by SCU to oversee clinical training. Supervising clinicians have credentials evaluated prior to affiliation, and credentials are reviewed on a recurring basis by programs.
The terms “Clinical Director,” “Assistant Program Director,” and other similar terminology refer to the individual responsible for oversight of clinical training in the program. Therefore, these terms also include “Fieldwork Coordinators” and others with similar roles in clinical training programs.
The default clinical education portal and dashboard throughout the clinical education experience is EXXAT/PRISM. This is where clinical students track hours, credit requirements, placements/rotations, and other essential clinical items. This is also where clinical students submit program- and site-specific documentation required in the clinical phase of the program unless otherwise noted. Clinical students must keep contact information and any other required documentation up to date in this system. Programs may also have additional software resources for clinical education information and outcomes, such as Canvas, Zoho, etc. - clinical students should verify these additional locations with the program.
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