UC Irvine IM consult service

[neilc]

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hey all! this didn't get me any help in the IM forum, so i am moving it here. i am getting ready to do a clerkship in IM, doing consults. up to this point, my med school clerkship experience has all taken place in Prague. i am a bit nervous about this coming clerkship, to say the least...

now, my goals are to survive and learn a lot without making a fool of myself. with that in mind, what should i be ready to do? if anyone has been through this rotation at, it would be great if you could share it....but, i also could use some general advice on what to expect, what to be ready to do, what i should know, what i should not do, etc...additionally, what is a typical day for the IM consult service? we will be doing consults mainly for gen surg, psych and ob/gyn.

thanks in advance guys!

 

[Jaded Soul]

Sorry, I don't have any info for you. I'm curious about this too because I haven't heard of a dedicated general IM consult service. On all the other services, if we needed a med consult we just called the on-call team, which obviously changes everyday. Conversely, when I was on medicine part of our duties as the on-call team was to do consults. Are you sure this isn't an IM subspecialty consult service?

 

[JR]

Hey, PM me and we can chat about this...

 

[neilc]

thanks for the input...here is the course description:

COURSE DESCRIPTION: The general internal medicine consultation service is one of the busiest in the hospital and provides management assistance to physicians on surgical, ob/gyn, psychiatric, physical medicine and other services. The emphasis is on evaluation and care of preoperative or perioperative medical problems, the medical complications of pregnancy, and evaluation of psychiatric patients with medical problems. However, a wide variety of situations are addressed. The rotation also includes daily general medicine conferences, and clinics to evaluate perioperative medical management and assessment of surgical risk. The course is supervised by a full time inpatient faculty member of the Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care. The consult team consists of an attending, two R3's in Medicine and fourth year medical student. There is no call but occasionally weekend rounds are required.

so, will i be doing pre-op h&p's? or what? any info would be helpful...

thanks!

neil

 

[Kalel]

Well, they may have you guys doing some pre-op H+P's, but I think that the vast majority of those being done on an inpatient status will be done by cardiology and pulmonary to address their issues from their respective specialties. Most university hospitals have a medicine consult team, and this team's funciton is basically to address basic medical issues that the specialists may not feel comfortable addressing themselves. Sometimes this can mean things like uncontrolled hypertension, diabetes (though most have specific diabetes services through endocrine), adjusting out-patient meds, medical conditions that arise in patients on other services (eg pancreatitis in pregnant women in ob service, or pneumonia in surgical service, etc). I don't think that you need to do all that much to prepare, you could just review a medicine review book (eg blueprints or first aid) just to make sure that you have the basics down before starting. Be sure to read the FAQ sticky in the IM forum too, that advises people how to do well during their IM rotation. Good luck!