Internal Medicine Clerkship (IMED 401)

The Internal Medicine Clerkship is an 8-week course for third-year medical students that introduces them to this broad and diverse specialty. The main objectives of this clerkship course are to develop the student’s ability to act as a clinical problem-solver to:

• Recognize urgent and treatable illnesses in internal medicine based on analysis of symptoms, signs and data;
• Set clinical priorities;
• Design a care plan for diagnosis, management, monitoring, and screening;
• Choose the best next steps to take for a given clinical situation; and
• Determine whether the current care plan is effective.

Under the supervision of attending faculty and more senior trainees, students learn to function with increasing independence as clinicians with direct patient care responsibilities in an interprofessional health care team. Students are responsible for performing and writing summaries of histories, physical exams, and investigations, and to come up with problem lists that include differential diagnosis and treatment plans.

The course includes:

• 4 weeks in an acute care Internal Medicine Clinical Teaching Unit
• 2 weeks with the general Internal Medicine consultation service in the emergency room
• 2 weeks in a Cardiology Clinical Teaching Unit.