Course Director: LeAnn Coberly, M.D.

The Internal Medicine third-year clerkship is an eight-week rotation consisting of four weeks on an inpatient ward service and four weeks in ambulatory care.

On the inpatient service, students are assigned to general internal medicine and subspecialty ward teams and given patient care responsibility commensurate for their level of training under the supervision of interns, senior residents and attending physicians. The educational emphasis is on history and physical examination skills and problem definition. The third-year students are given the opportunity to complete a detailed history and physical examination, written and oral presentation and discussion of their assigned patients several times during the month. The students are encouraged to participate in all aspects of patient care including medical procedures.

In the ambulatory setting, students are given significant patient-care responsibility. In the Student Clinic, patients are scheduled specifically for the student-physician who is responsible for the patients’ entire outpatient care under the guidance and supervision of a faculty physician. To complement their student clinic experience, students work with a preceptor based in the community and in an Internal Medicine subspecialty clinic.

Also during the ambulatory block, the IM rotation provides opportunities for self-study with computer-based teaching modules in EKG interpretation, Dermatology, Radiology and Nutrition.  Once per month, students attend a clinical skills session in the clinical skills lab where, under the direction of a faculty member, students practice techniques of venipuncture, intravenous catheter insertion, arterial blood gas sampling and nasogastric tube placement. 

The Internal Medicine clerkship includes a weekly lecture series given by full-time faculty in Internal Medicine on 24 core Internal Medicine topics which are the basis for the Professors’ Rounds examination. Third-year students participate in all academic conferences within the Department of Medicine.   Students are given direct feedback by faculty physicians and standardized patients on their history, physical examination, and communication skills through structured clinical exercises.  Students get written feedback on their history and physical examination write-ups by the course director.