Office of Medical Education

Introduction to Clinical Medicine 2 is the second year of a cumulative two-year course concerning the clinical application of medical sciences.  The second year course is intended to improve upon student skills in the patient encounter and doctor/patient relationship.  The course also provides a study in formal decision analysis, culture, belief systems, ethics, clinical information management, psychiatry, and behavioral sciences.  The student must complete a standardized patient examination assessing focused physical examination skills and abilities in eliciting patient histories at the end of the year.  This course contributes to the student's capacity for sompleteing step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam board examination through testing modeled in a similar format.  This course is divided into two sections that are graded separately.

Objective: This course introduces students to the techniques necessary to obtain a meaningful history and perform a thorough physical examination.  At the completion of this course, students will be expected to accurately collect, record, and report pertinent physical and biological data from adult patients and formulate problem lists and assessments.  Students will learn about disease manifistations from exposure to various specialty areas and general practice.

Students will perform two complete history and phytsical examinations at bedside in the presence of a preceptor and prepare four cases based on patient interviews. Preceptors will enhance the written and oral material with discussions of basic laboratory data.  Students will enhance their interpersonal skills to improve clinical diagnosis through exposure to the basic concepts of the behavioral sciences, development of an understanding of the manifistations and underlying dynamics of human behavioral diversity, and application of that understanding when establishing a theurapeutic patient/physician relationship.  Students will learn insights gained from human behavioral development and various psychodynamic models of personality development to better understand prevalent behavioral problems that patients present in a clinical setting.  Under the supervision of apreceptor, students will apply skills and concepts learned in the behavioral sciences to better cope with the normal fears and anxiety that accompany medical illness.

Additionally, students will learn basic statistical methods and study designs used in medical literature and techniques for accessing medical information utilizing electronic means.