Welcome to Medicine Internal Medicine Clerkship: Thinking Like an Internist. This text was designed specifically for medical students preparing for, entering, or actively participating in their Internal Medicine Clerkship. Every medical school clerkship seeks to provide an introduction to core illnesses, diagnostic evaluations, and therapeutic interventions unique to the medical field.
Every medical school clerkship seeks to provide an introduction to core illnesses; diagnostic evaluations, and therapeutic interventions unique to the medical field. The sheer number of illnesses, tests, and possible treatments specific to each field (especially internal medicine) is enormous - and often beyond the scope of what a medical student can learn in a discrete amount of time. Furthermore, our understanding of medical illness changes year after year, while new and novel therapies are employed.
Clerkship is designed differently from most traditional textbooks. In lieu of organization stemming from a list of traditional disease states, the text is organized around core pathologic processses such as inflammation, thrombosis and coagulation, and genetic mutations, among others. The purpose of each module is to actively extend students' understanding of a core pathologic process (often learned in preceding years) into their clinical learning environment.
The goal of each module is to allow the reader to reflect that such core pathologic processes form the basis of virtually ill medical illness. This structure also pushes the reader to think broadly about each pathologic process, realizing that many seemingly unrelated diseases share common root causes. In doing so, we hope students will be stimulated to think broadly about new and novel approaches to the diagnosis and treatment of human illness.
