The Department of Medicine has a long tradition of training some of the nation's leading physicians. Our education programs consist of the Core Clerkship Program to provide training to medical students, our Residency Program, and our General Internal Medicine and Specialty Fellowship Programs.
Please follow the links below to learn more about each program.
The Core Clerkship Program
The Medicine Clerkship is a four year program for medical students to introduce them to the clinical aspects of patient care.
During the clerkship, students spend one month on the inpatient services at both University Hospitals and the VA Medical Center. A one month ambulatory block experience with rotations at both UHC and the VA continues to be a popular component of the clerkship experience. Clinical experiences in the ambulatory block include the VA general medicine clinics, a variety of subspecialty clinics, and the UH emergency room. In addition, students rotate to an increasing number of general medicine and subspecialty practices in the community. These off-site experiences provide students with a more balanced view of internal medicine practice while utilizing the expertise of many talented physician-educators in the community. Case oriented interactive group sessions on diverse subjects (e.g., ECG interpretation, diabetes mellitus management, appropriate antibiotic usage) are held each week. Additionally, small group tutorial sessions are conducted on a weekly basis. During these sessions, students develop a differential diagnosis, a diagnostic strategy, and a treatment plan around a preselected case. Other activities during the ambulatory block month include computer case simulations. These computer exercises emphasize appropriate diagnostic work-up and therapeutic plan. Two half day sessions, devoted to independent study, provide students with the time to perform the computer case simulations as well as to explore and appreciate the multiplicity of forums for learning.
A core topics list serves to focus student effort on important aspects of internal medicine as well as to provide a framework for ward-centered teaching by the housestaff. In addition to ward rounds and the ambulatory conferences noted above, formal teaching sessions are conducted by the housestaff four days of each week.
The assessment by the faculty and housestaff of the student's ability to function as an effective and compassionate physician remains the cornerstone of evaluation. The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) is utilized near the end of the clerkship to assess the student's clinical skills. Emphasis has been placed on providing the student with feedback on their performance at each station of the examination in order to effect improvement in their skills. The National Board of Medical Examiners Medicine shelf test is administered at the end of the clerkship to assess each student's fund of knowledge.
Generalist Physician Initiative Program - Third Year
In 1994, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine was awarded a three year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to develop and implement a General Physician Initiative Program -- an innovative multidisciplinary curriculum for Primary Care physicians of the future. Three sites, University Hospitals of the Cleveland/Cleveland VA Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center, and Henry Ford Hospital are preparing cirriculum for a generalist third year.
The UH/VA Working Group has created an innovative curriculum based on the following assumptions: 50% of the curriculum will be ambulatory, students will have a continuity experience in ambulatory sites within each discipline, students will have an immersion experience with depth and intensity, track generalist students, residents and faculty together to create unique mentoring, maximize use of existing quality teaching programs, and ongoing evaluation of the programmatic changes.
In view of the complexity and uniqueness of the Department of Medicine Generalist Physician Initiative curriculum, evaluation is comprehensive, including a pre-clerkship assessment, use of multiple-evaluation instruments such as monthly evaluation assessments, and separate Clerkship evaluations from Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and an overall evaluation to the Registrar's Office. .
Physical Diagnosis
Physical Diagnosis is the main component of the preclinical patient based experience. It is designed to provide second year medical students with the methods, approaches and techniques to do history and phsical exams. The course material is presented in lecture series, small group teaching sessions as well as practical sessions where students interview and examine patients. Preceptors teaching the course are full-time faculty members of the Department of Medicine. Approximately 80% of second year students have preceptors at University Hospitals of Cleveland or the Wade Park Veterans Affairs Medical Center, while 20% have their small group sessions at Metrohealth Medical Center. Two additional sessions are given to students by preceptors from the Department of Pediatrics as a review of the unique aspects of pediatric physical exam.
For information on admission to the Core Clerkship Program and the CWRU School of Medicine, please visit the School of Medicine's Admissions Office Web Page.
