Overall, I found this course to be a helpful simulation for what I will encounter in my clinical rotations. Through this course, I was able to strengthen many of my skills, some of which include forming a complete differential diagnosis list, ordering and interpreting lab results, and utilizing outside resources such as UpToDate and Pubmed to gather information for my presentations. I’ve also learned to be more confident in my abilities and my knowledge. Though there were moments where I felt I didn’t know as much as my peers, I found that I had retained more than I thought from my didactic year and could contribute to the discussion appropriately. 

Compared to the very first semester we had this course, the instructors really challenged us this time with cases where further investigation needed to be done beyond the initial diagnostic testing. I found this to be effective in building my skills to think beyond the obvious or the expected, especially in situations where all the test results came back negative. I also found cases where the patient could only give minimal information for the HPI or where no past medical history could be provided quite challenging, but highly valuable in improving my investigational skills. Two aspects to working up a patient that was focused on by the instructors and I thought was particularly useful in staying organized was first to keep the differential diagnoses list broad and to not jump to conclusions based on the initial presentation, and second to constantly be referring back to this list to rule out or in conditions as more information is acquired. Areas that I hope to still improve on in my clinical year are knowing the order of operations for urgent patients and determining which patients need to be admitted and which ones can be discharged.

For any of the lower classmen, I would advise them to take advantage of this course because it requires you to exercise the knowledge acquired during didactic year and apply it to a clinical setting. It forces you to think about the patient as a whole and why certain tests or treatments, that we had learned in our classes, may not always be appropriate. I found it to be a valuable course to have right before going to clinical rotations.

I’ve attached my last clinical correlation reflection below.

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