Hey Kenobi! I was wondering about the clinical experience at your school. How do clinical labs work? How are they preparing you for rotations? Have you gotten to use the sim labs? How do they test you over clinical material?
We have a class called "introduction to clinical medicine" every Tuesday. This course is where we learn the bulk of our clinical skills. Last semester it started with lectures and small group discussions...these discussions ranged from clinical cases, ethical decision making/topics, discussions about evidence based medicine and role playing effective communication in different situations. The course eventually progressed to us learning how to properly document soap notes and perform a thorough history along with basic physical examination skills.
Our curriculum is "integrated" meaning they try to tie everything we are learning together in one way or another. For example, when we were in our neuroscience block in the systems courses, we were learning how to perform a clinical neurological exam in the clinical medicine course. Now we are in cardiovascular system, so everything in the clinical course is related to that--heart sounds, blood pressure, ECG etc etc.
I believe next year we will have a whole other course that covers in great detail all of the other miscellaneous skills we should have some experience with come rotations--sterile technique, suturing, injections, blood draws--and other pertinent issues regarding rotations. Medical imaging interpretation has been relatively heavy at our school compared to others-- from what we've been told. We have had quite a few lectures from our radiology faculty as well--much of it was incorporated into our anatomy course.
There are a few different ways they test our clinical skills.
1) written exams-self explanatory
2) OSCE-objective structured clinical examination--this is where you play doctor. It takes place in a mock doctors office and you interact with a "standardized patient"--an actor. The encounter is also recorded. There is a prompt on the door before you enter telling you the chief complaint and then you get a set amount of time to complete the encounter. When you are finished with the patient you then type out your soap note using the same computer program you would use in a hospital/clinic. You are able to go back and rewatch your video. For example: when you walk up to the door of the room, there will be a sign that says the patients name and "headache" or "sore throat" or something like that. You then enter the room talk to the patient, go through your examination, discuss your diagnosis and plan for treating etc.
3) Sim labs (with automated simulation "dummies")-We have only used these once so far. They have a few different sim rooms set up with different dummies (pregnant/delivery, pediatric ICU, adult ICU/ER etc)...they are pretty cool. We have our second sim coming up shortly. In our first use of these labs we worked as a team with 4 other students and performed an ICU neuro assessment on a patient who turned out to be brain dead. After coming to the conclusion that the patient was deceased, they brought in live actors who played the family of the patient and it was our job to talk to them about the situation. Was actually a cool learning experience.
The school also paired each one of us up with a physician mentor...they said they did it according to what we said our interests were before starting school. So people are paired with all sorts of different MDs and DOs around town at all of the different hospitals--including IU. We are supposed to spend time with them in the hospitals and clinics etc ...this is a cool experience as well. At least from my experience with it, "shadowing" a physician as a medical student has been much different from doing it as a pre-med. I have been able to assist with some things, interact with patients etc. I am sure this experience is different for everyone depending on the mentor the student is with but it keeps you in a "live" medical environment and allows you to see how the things you are learning in class are applicable to real world medicine.