Practice of Medicine I

Six quarter series extending throughout the first two years of the MD program, interweaving core skills training in medical interviewing and the physical examination with other major threads addressing the context of medical practice: information literacy, nutrition principles, clinical epidemiology and biostatistics, evidence-based practice, psychiatry, biomedical ethics, health policy, population health. Core clinical skills are acquired through hands-on practice, and evaluated through an extensive program of simulated medical encounters, in which students interview, examine, and manage patients in a mock clinic. The information literacy thread introduces students to informatics and knowledge management, biomedical informatics, and evidence-based medicine searching. Nutrition principles are acquired through interactive, web-based instruction, and reinforced through problem-based learning cases, which run in parallel to the basic science components over the first year. In epdemiology students learn the taxonomy of epidemiological studies, how to critically read a journal article, and how to recognize and understand the concepts behind different clinical study designs. Topics include bias, confounding, diagnostic testing and screening, and "how statistics can lie." Psychiatry introduces students to the unique role of medical students in talking with patients, the difference between process and content in patient communication, how to respond to breaks in the patient-physician relationship, and the relationship between the quality of the patient-physician interaction and health outcomes. Health care policy covers such topics as health insurance, physician payment, health care costs, access, measurement and improvement of quality, regulation and health care reform. Biomedical ethics includes important ethical issues in medical practice, such as confidentiality, privacy, and ethical issues relating to medical students. The population health curriculum exposes students to concepts of public health, community action, and advocacy, and includes a year-long, community-based project. At the end of this quarter students participate in a performance-based assessment of the medical interview skills.Course offered to MD and MSPA students only.