Student comments on Advanced Clinical Skills Course

Proficiency in clinical examination skills upon graduation from medical school is a core competency. Over the last few decades, the ability and confidence in this fundamental and crucial skill set have declined. The motivation and interest in meticulous physical examination by recently graduated residents have also eroded. In this case study, we describe a comprehensive, innovative, and immersive advanced clinical skills elective taken during the second half of the final year of medical school for students at the David Geffen School of Medicine. The course utilizes novel approaches to inspire, refresh and consolidate essential bedside observation skills and examination techniques. This approach gives senior students the confidence and fundamental understanding of how dedication to the patient exam can improve the doctor-patient relationship, core clinical reasoning and the practice of cost-effective and evidence-based care through their careers. We describe how the integration of fine a..., Methods
All students rotate through all of these sessions and field trips over the 15 days of the course.
Visual Diagnosis
This key component of the course occurs each morning from 9:00am to 10:30am. In our medical school, we have a large classroom equipped with 24 benches, each of which has two flat-screen monitors. The 50 students are randomly assigned to small groups of 4–5 students, who share a bench. At the control screen, the three course chairs reveal up to ten high-resolution clinical images on each group monitor per session.  These clinical images were obtained and curated by the course chairs over their combined 70 years of inpatient and outpatient clinical practice in academic teaching hospital departments: general internal medicine, neurology, ophthalmology, emergency medicine, pulmonary and critical care settings. All images were obtained with patient permission or were de-identified. Most are of actual clinical signs but where appropriate, images are augmented with radiolo..., PDF