First Impressions of Learning in Ambulatory Internal Medicine

February 22 

by Alison

Apart from a few half-days on my core internal medicine rotation, yesterday and today were my first real ambulatory internal medicine clinics.  It was certainly different from ward medicine. With morning report, noon rounds, and team rounds, there’s a lot of excellent case-based learning in internal medicine.  However, unlike most teaching rounds, the ambulatory clinic allowed me to learn about the cases with the patients present. Although the ambulatory patients certainly had medical issues, the lack of acuity allowed me to really focus on learning.  We got a lot of excellent instruction from our preceptor while with the patients, and then had time to discuss each patient’s presentation afterwards.  My learning in the past two days has included thyroid disorders, dermatomyositis, MGUS, and temporal arteritis.  This has been a great start to the selective and I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.