Exam Room
In collaboration with:
Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM)
The Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM)

The 40 interactive virtual patient cases in AquiferSM Family Medicine deliver on the learning objectives of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine’s (STFM) clerkship curriculum, powered by AqueductSM, Aquifer’s teaching and learning platform.

Overview

Aquifer Family Medicine (formerly fmCASES) builds clinical competency, fills educational gaps, and helps instill the core values and attitudes of family medicine. The course fosters self-directed and independent study, develops clinical problem-solving skills, and teaches an evidence-based, patient-centered approach to patient care.

Coming July 1: Embedded Curricular Threads

New embedded threads will provide consistent teaching on interdisciplinary Clinical Excellence topics throughout Aquifer’s core courses. Family Medicine cases will include new content woven into our existing cases to highlight key principles in palliative care, trauma-informed care, social determinants of health, high value care, diagnostic excellence, and foundations of telemedicine. Learn more…

  • Created for educators, by educators, to cover the full range of STFM curriculum
  • Available for institutional subscription or for direct purchase by individual subscribers
  • Access to Aquifer Calibrate: Transformative Assessments for Clinical Learning Mastery, our innovative system for formative assessment, available with your 2023-24 subscription
  • Proven pedagogy that standardizes experiences—overcoming geography, seasonality, and accessibility
  • Evidence-based, peer-reviewed, and continuously updated content
  • Self-assessment questions emphasize key content and enable students to test their knowledge and skills
  • A wealth of source material, tools, and full references in each case
  • Delivered via the Aqueduct teaching and learning platform, which includes user management options, easy reporting on student progress and course usage, plus tools for creating custom courses to match a specific curriculum
  • Access to Aquifer Calibrate: Transformative Assessments for Clinical Learning Mastery, our innovative system for formative assessment, available to Aquifer 2022-23 Curricular Partners

This course covers the complete STFM Family Medicine Clerkship Curriculum. Course content includes five Aquifer Pediatrics cases and two Aquifer Internal Medicine cases to help cover the full range of family medicine learning objectives.

Self Assessment Questions, included with the course content, are a valuable component of the learning and have been shown to improve student performance on exams (Seagrave et al, 2016).

Aquifer Family Medicine can be used by third-year medical students, Physician Assistant students, and Nurse Practitioner students as a complement to a clerkship or course on family medicine.

Research has shown that students who complete more cases perform better on the Aquifer Family Medicine exam (Chessman et al, 2013). Even if you aren’t requiring all 40 cases, we recommend encouraging your students to complete as many cases as possible.

Aquifer Calibrate, an innovative system for formative assessments, is in development for Aquifer Family Medicine. The new assessments will combine the concepts of test-enhanced learning and distributed practice to facilitate efficient study planning and self-directed learning for students, and identify at-risk students and curricular gaps for faculty.

Our current 100-question summative multiple-choice exam will continue to be available through June 2023. 

Aquifer’s online, validated summative exam is included with your Aquifer Family Medicine course subscription. Unlike the NMBE, our 100-item, multiple-choice exam was created by Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) educators as an assessment tool based specifically on the Family Medicine clerkship curriculum.

The exam is delivered in a secure browser and accompanied by student assessment reports with individual and class data. It can be used to replace or enhance an existing comprehensive assessment or to remediate students. The exam has also been found to improve NBME performance when used as a pre-test (Nguyen 2018).

A study of 130 medical students at one institution found the percent correct on the Aquifer Family Medicine and NBME examinations were highly correlated (Pearson correlation coefficient = 0.607). Using linear regression, performance on the Aquifer Family Medicine exam was a very strong positive predictor of subsequent NBME scores (p=.00000000000002) (Sussman, 2012).

Family Medicine 01: 45-year-old female wellness visit

Family Medicine 02: 55-year-old male wellness visit

Family Medicine 03: 65-year-old female with insomnia

Family Medicine 04: 19-year-old female with sports injury

Family Medicine 05: 30-year-old female with palpitations

Family Medicine 06: 57-year-old female diabetes care visit

Family Medicine 07: 53-year-old male with leg swelling

Family Medicine 08: 54-year-old male with elevated blood pressure

Family Medicine 09: 50-year-old female with palpitations

Family Medicine 10: 45-year-old male with low back pain

Family Medicine 11: 74-year-old female with knee pain

Family Medicine 12: 16-year-old female with vaginal bleeding and UCG

Family Medicine 13: 40-year-old male with a persistent cough

Family Medicine 14: 35-year-old female with missed period

Family Medicine 15: 42-year-old male with right upper quadrant pain

Family Medicine 16: 68-year-old male with skin lesion

Family Medicine 17: 55-year-old post-menopausal female with vaginal bleeding

Family Medicine 18: 24-year-old female with headaches

Family Medicine 19: 39-year-old male with epigastric pain

Family Medicine 20: 28-year-old female with abdominal pain

Family Medicine 21: 12-year-old female with fever

Family Medicine 22: 70-year-old male with new-onset unilateral weakness

Family Medicine 23: 5-year-old female with sore throat

Family Medicine 24: 4-week-old female with fussiness

Family Medicine 25: 38-year-old male with shoulder pain

Family Medicine 26: 55-year-old male with fatigue

Family Medicine 27: 17-year-old male with groin pain

Family Medicine 28: 58-year-old male with shortness of breath

Family Medicine 29: 72-year-old male with dementia

Family Medicine 30: 27-year-old female labor and delivery

Family Medicine 31: 66-year-old female with shortness of breath

Family Medicine 32: 33-year-old female with painful periods

Family Medicine 33: 28-year-old female with dizziness

Pediatrics 01: Newborn male infant evaluation and care

Pediatrics 02: Infant female well-child visits (2, 6, and 9 months)

Pediatrics 03: 3-year-old male well-child visit

Pediatrics 04: 8-year-old male well-child check

Pediatrics 13: 6-year-old female with chronic cough

Internal Medicine 02: 60-year-old female with episodic chest discomfort

Internal Medicine 16: 45-year-old male with obesity

From Our Cases

User Story

Learn how Aquifer Family Medicine can benefit medical students and faculty in your program:

Academic Presentation

Aligning the National Clerkship Curriculum, the NBME, and Aquifer Family Medicine’s Learning Objectives for Enhanced Curricular Mapping

From the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Medical Student Education Conference 2021:

Aquifer Family Medicine Course Board