A curricular addition using art to enhance reflection on professional values.

Background: Art and humanities can enhance undergraduate medical education curricular objectives. Most commonly, art is used to help students learn observational skills, such as medical interviewing and physical diagnosis. Educators concurrently struggle to find ways to meaningfully teach professional values within crowded curricula.

Overnight call: a survey of medical student experiences, attitudes, and skills.

Background: Residency work hour restrictions in 2003 changed medical student participation in overnight call.

Purposes: The goal is to compare experiences, attitudes, and skills between medical students who did and did not participate in overnight call.

Methods: Using a retrospective cohort design, all students at one medical school received a survey at the end of their 3rd-year internal medicine clerkship.

The required written history and physical is alive, but not entirely well, in internal medicine clerkships.

Background: Effective written communication is a core competency for medical students, but it is unclear whether or how this skill is evaluated in clinical clerkships.

Purpose: This study identifies current requirements and practices regarding required written work during internal medicine clerkships.

Methods: In 2010, Clerkship Directors of Internal Medicine (CDIM) surveyed its institutional members; one section asked questions about students' written work.

Relationship between clinical experiences and internal medicine clerkship performance.

Objectives: This study was conducted to assess the associations between several clerkship process measures and students' clinical and examination performance in an internal medicine clerkship.

Methods: We collected data from the internal medicine clerkship at one institution over a 3-year period (classes of 2010-2012; n = 507) and conducted correlation and multiple regression analyses. We examined the associations between clerkship process measures (student-reported number of patients evaluated, percentage of core problems encountered, total number of core problems encountered, total number of clinics attended) and four clerkship outcomes (clinical points [a weighted summation of a student's clinical grade recommendations], ambulatory clinical points [the out-patient portion of clinical points], examination points [a weighted summation of scores on three clerkship examinations], and National Board of Medical Examiners examination score).

Internal medicine core clerkships experience with core problem lists: results from a national survey of clerkship directors in internal medicine.

Background: The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) requires clinical clerkships in North American Medical Schools to define and monitor core problems and clinical conditions for medical students and adjust the clerkships to ensure that all students meet those objectives at all instructional sites. Clinical clerkships usually use medical student generated logbooks to meet these requirements. It is not clear what clinical clerkship directors are doing to meet these standards.

A prospective controlled trial of the influence of a geriatrics home visit program on medical student knowledge, skills, and attitudes towards care of the elderly.

Purpose: To determine the impact of a geriatrics home visit program for third-year medical students on attitudes, skills, and knowledge.

Methods: Using a mixed methods, prospective, controlled trial, volunteer control group students (n = 17) at two sites and intervention group students (n = 16) at two different sites within the same internal medicine clerkship were given Internet and CDROM-based geriatric self-study materials. Intervention group students identified a geriatrics patient from their clinical experience, performed one "home" visit (home, nursing home, or rehabilitation facility) to practice geriatric assessment skills, wrote a structured, reflective paper, and presented their findings in small-group teaching settings.

An internal medicine interest group research program can improve scholarly productivity of medical students and foster mentoring relationships with internists.

Background: Shortages in primary care careers such as internal medicine are projected in the future. Conducting research is an explicit requirement for graduate medical education and interest in research is growing in undergraduate medical education.

Purpose: We hypothesized that a medical student research initiative could increase student research productivity and foster mentoring relationships with internists.

Accuracy of medical student electronic logbook problem list entry.

Background: The accuracy of medical student logbooks has not been extensively studied.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine accuracy of student entry of core problems and completeness of patient entry in an electronic logbook.

Methods: Third-year internal medicine clerkship students entered patient encounters as required by the clerkship.

Narrative review: use of student-generated logbooks in undergraduate medical education.

Background: Logbooks are used by clinical clerkships in undergraduate medical education as tools for individual student guidance, programmatic evaluation, and Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accreditation. The purpose of this narrative review was to summarize the published literature on the form and function of logbooks and to review logbook validity and reliability. We performed a literature search from 1980 through 2004 and reviewed 50 articles on logbook use during clinical clerkships.

A time and motion study of the effect of ambulatory medical students on the duration of general internal medicine clinics.

Background: Teaching medical students in the ambulatory setting may influence the duration or number of patients per clinic.

Purpose: To directly measure the time required to teach medical students in an outpatient clinic and to determine if there was a difference in activities performed by faculty when a student was present in the clinic.

Methods: In this prospective, nonrandomized study, 83 clinic sessions were analyzed; 50 without a 3rd-year internal medicine clerkship student and 33 with a student.

Is a faculty developed pretest equivalent to pre-third year GPA or USMLE step 1 as a predictor of third-year internal medicine clerkship outcomes?

Background: Preclinical grade point average (GPA), and United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 are well-known preclerkship methods of identifying students at risk of poor performance. These measures are not available at all medical schools and may be considered prejudicial.

Purpose: Does an examination on the first day of a clerkship (pretest) correlate with grade point average (GPA) or USMLE Step 1 scores, and does it provide equivalent insight in predicting clerkship outcomes?

Methods: At this medical school, students take a faculty-developed pretest on the first day of the internal medicine clerkship.

Intersite consistency as a measurement of programmatic evaluation in a medicine clerkship with multiple, geographically separated sites.

Purpose: This study introduces "intersite consistency" as a measurement of programmatic evaluation and demonstrates its feasibility and construct validity.

Method: Student data in our multisite, geographically separated clerkship were collected prospectively over a ten-year period (1990-2000). We calculated mean scores for each clerkship measurement and analyzed these data on both a yearly and a 10-year cumulative basis.