Internal medicine specializes in the application of scientific knowledge and clinical expertise to achieve comprehensive medical care (diagnosis, treatment, and prevention) for adults. To achieve safe, effective, and patient centered care, an accurate and timely diagnosis is required. The primary goal of this clerkship is to advance mastery of the foundational skills of data gathering, synthesis and clinical reasoning necessary to function as progressively more independent clinicians across disciplines.
1. Hypothesis Driven Data Gathering
- Students will progressively transition from template driven history and physical data gathering to eliciting information in a purposeful fashion based on the working hypotheses for causation of disease. This requires students to grow a bank of possible differential diagnoses for a given symptom (illness scripts) and to identify characteristics, both historical and on physical exam, that increase or decrease the likelihood of a disease process.
2. Active Participation in Patient Care
- Students are expected to actively participate in obtaining, communicating, and discussing patient information and the delivery of patient care. This will include formal and informal presentations/discussions with graduate trainees (interns/residents) and/or staff physicians, proposing diagnoses as well as diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, documentation of work and thought process in the electronic medical record, and communication with nursing or other staff /consultants.
3. Development of Illness Scripts for Common Disease Presentations
- Students will be exposed to the presentation, progression, and complications of common medical conditions. Students will develop expanded illness scripts based on self-directed study and bedside clinical discussions of the variety of diseases that may present with a similar symptomatology and key factors to help differentiate disease.
4. Knowledge Expansion of Internal Medicine Topics.