Clinical Rotation

Description

Students work at the level of sub-interns, with senior resident and attending supervision, encountering a wide range of patients, presenting complaints, and levels of acuity. Learning is primarily through direct patient care experience and bedside teaching, supplemented with lectures, directed readings, workshops/labs and simulation experiences.

Objectives

• Learn a systematic approach to the diagnosis and management of several common ED presentations, including:
  • Abdominal/pelvic pain
  • Chest Pain
  • Shortness of breath
  • Fever/sepsis
  • Acute focal weakness/stroke symptoms
  • Laceration repair
  • Soft tissue infection/abscess drainage
  • Musculoskeletal pain/sprains/fractures
  • Altered mental status/delirium
  • Poisoning (including Etoh, drugs of abuse, overdose)
  • Major trauma
• Learn to develop, and how to prioritize, an appropriate differential diagnosis for the above clinical presentations.
• Perform common ED procedures such as placing peripheral IV's, suturing, and splinting
• Develop an understanding of the triage process.
• Learn to recognize and stabilize emergently ill and injured patients
• Understand the role of the pre-hospital provider
• Understand the role of all members of the interdisciplinary emergency department team including RNs, MAs, social workers, PT, radiology personnel, and consultants.
• Understand the role that social situations have on medical illness.