Challenges

A goal for Core Surgery Clerkship students is to link the clinical knowledge and skills of surgery to the content learned in their pre-clinical curriculum.

Structurally, Core Surgery Clerkships are brief, often only 4-12 weeks in length, limiting the student's exposure to clinical care. Learning in this environment of limited exposure is best achieved if students can generalize principles learned from one clinical situation to others they may not encounter directly.

Details of specific diseases/problems (i.e. the staging system for any one form of cancer) familiar to those caring for subsets of patients on a consistent basis are likely be forgotten with disuse by students caring for subsets of patients for brief periods of time.

Goals

We aim to emphasize the link between basic pathophysiology and how it manifests as diseases/problems often treated by surgeons.

We aim to focus on the understanding of broad topics/concepts that are illustrated by many specific diseases/conditions. We feel that an understanding of these core concepts is likely to be remembered by students beyond their time on their Surgery Clerkship.

We aim to encourage reflection and extrapolations to be drawn between diseases/problems within larger pathophysiologic topics thus informing students about more than the few specific diseases they may clinically encounter during their Core Surgery Clerkship.

Methods

In order to achieve our goals Surgery Clerkship is organized around core pathophysiologic topics/big ideas (i.e. inflammation). Each topic chapter is presented in the same format as outlined below. Within each topic/chapter, specific examples of diseases/problems illustrating the topic will be listed at the end of the chapter. Links to sections of Surgery with more detail on these specific diseases/conditions will be provided within the list.

Additionally, there will be chapters in this Section of Surgery for the Surgery Clerkship to address the skills of communication, professionalism and basic technical procedures.

The 'Big Ideas'

Surgery Clerkship is organized around core pathophysiologic topics/big ideas. We aim to focus on the understanding of broad topics/concepts that are illustrated by many specific diseases/conditions. We feel that an understanding of these core concepts is likely to be remembered by students beyond their time on their Surgery Clerkship.

Big Ideas
Inflammation; Infection; Oncogenesis; Obstruction; Ischemia; Disruptions in Homeostasis; Disruptions in Mechanical Integrity

Procedural Skills

All modules are step-by-step beautifully illustrated basic procedural skills tested of medical students during their Surgery Core Clerkship. Criteria for self and instructor assessment included with each topic.

Procedures
Arterial Blood Gas; Basic Airway Management; Foley Placement; Intravenous Catheter Insertion; Lumbar Puncture; Pelvic Examination; Suturing & Knot Tying; Venipuncture