Medicine Clerkship

Catalog Description:  The MED 7500 (Medicine Clerkship or "Med I") is the core clinical clerkship that provides the critical foundations for not only adult inpatient medicine but also for the care of the acutely ill patient. Students will be part of inpatient care teams that will include interns, residents, and faculty.

Students will learn through case discussions and presentations, didactics, independent study, and in the daily care of their patients. Students are expected to care for their patients as their primary point of contact, to begin to assume the responsibility for caring for, and coordinating care for, their patients.

In addition, students on MED 7500 are expected to develop the basic skills of patient care in an academic environment. These skills include working across disciplines and professions on a health care team, effectively documenting and relaying patient care information between other care providers, and learning how to gather information to create a well-formulated assessment and plan. The skills learned on MED 7500 provide the foundation for patient care that students will use across disciplines for the remainder of medical school, into residency, and beyond.

Canvas Site

Sites: 

View site addresses by clicking on the site name below or visiting the site codes table.

Required session attendance:

Typical weekly schedule/Delivery Mode: Patient care 6 days per week: pre-rounds/rounds typically in the mornings starting at 7:00 or 7:30am, patient care during the day with management of admissions, new patients, and discharges (can typically go until 4pm or potentially 9pm on call days, with didactic/teaching sessions throughout the day.  One day off per week.

Direct patient care: Yes

Consent Requirement: Open to student scheduling

Course Objectives: By the end of this rotation, students will be able to:

• Elicit and record an appropriate complete, cogent and organized medical history.
• Conduct and record an appropriately complete and accurate physical examination.
• Communicate in a facilitative, effective, efficient, and educational manner with patients and their families.
• Identify the social and psychological components of patients' medical problems.
• Use knowledge of the pathophysiology of signs and symptoms to establish clinical correlation's with disease processes.
• Develop an accurate and complete problem list.
• Formulate a reasoned differential diagnosis for each problem.
• Formulate an appropriate plan for confirming the diagnosis.
• Use knowledge of the indications and limitations of clinical sources such as laboratory and roentgenographic studies, consults, family input and old records to request and interpret data pertinent to problem solving.
• Use information from texts, syllabi, and journals to study general topics related to patient's problems.
• Observe, review, reassess, and revise clinical management daily, record patient progress in the medical record, and make a verbal report to the health care team.
• Communicate clearly and succinctly to colleagues and other members of the health care team.

Graded Components: 

• Clinical assessments by precptors
• NBME Shelf Exam
• EKG Exam
• Site Portfolio

Grading Scale: P/N