Clinical Years
Core Clerkship in Internal Medicine
The Core Clerkship in Internal Medicine is an intensive introduction to the discipline of internal medicine. The clerkship consists of eight weeks on the medical services of the School's affiliated hospitals. All students, in groups of four or five, spend four weeks at Bellevue Hospital Center and another four weeks at either Tisch Hospital, the VA Medical Center New York, Lenox Hill Hospital, or North Shore University Hospital.
Students participate in the study and care of patients under the direct supervision of the ward resident and two teaching attending physicians. The attending physicians on each ward discuss mechanisms of disease and provide clinical teaching at three bedside sessions each week. Ward residents demonstrate and discuss advanced physical diagnosis.
In addition to clinical write-ups and presentations, each student is required to write one formal essay during the clerkship, based upon a brief case report. The focus of the essay can be artistic, biological, chemical, economic, geographic, historical, literary, mathematical, mechanistic, metaphysical, ethical, humanistic, or any other area of interest.
Clerkship Awards are presented for Outstanding Essays in Medical Humanism, Medical Science, Philosophy of Medicine, Pathophysiology, and Creative Arts. One of the goals of this exercise is to stimulate students to continue submitting manuscripts for publication in scientific journals throughout their professional careers.
