Ambulatory Curriculum
Internship
The intern outpatient curriculum is delivered in small group sessions during dedicated ambulatory block rotations. It includes practice management and core clinical topics and is taught by faculty with in both a case-based and didactic formats.
Practice System Topics
- Coding and Documentation
- Hospital Practice Profile
- Practice Resources
- Quality Improvement
- Practice Resources
- Searching the Literature
- Time Management
Core Clinical Topics
- Anticoagulation
- Asthma
- Back Pain
- Breast Care
- Common Infections
- Diabetes Mellitus
- Headache
- HIV Primary Care
- Hypertension
- Periodic Health Exam
- Pelvic Exams
- Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Junior and Senior Years
The junior and senior curriculum is delivered during practice week rotations in a two year cycle to ensure exposure to core concepts. Principal themes include preventive medicine, behavioral medicine, women's health, evidence-based medicine (brief clinical review), and interpretation of the medical literature (journal club). General internal medicine faculty members, BIDMC specialists, and senior residents serve as seminar leaders, lecturers, and discussion facilitators.
Preventative Medicine
Conferences focus upon a critical appraisal of the literature as well as analysis of the utility of screening for specific diseases and preventive treatments. Sample topics include:
- Aspirin Prophylaxis
- Breast Cancer
- Cervical Cancer
- Colon Cancer
- Diabetes Mellitus
- Cholesterol
- Genetic Screening
- Hemochromatosis
- Hyperlipidemia
- Immunizations
- Lung Cancer
- Obesity
- Ovarian Cancer
- Prostate Cancer
- Smoking Cessation
- Stroke Prevention
Behavioral Medicine
Emphasis is placed on learning methods of behavior modification, risk assessment, and risk modification. In addition, medical conditions and problems that raise difficult issues for practitioners are presented and explored.
- Advance Directives
- Alcohol Abuse
- Anxiety
- Care of the Dying Patient
- Chronic Pain Management
- Culturally Competent Care
- Dementia
- Depression
- Disability
- Domestic Violence
- Eating Disorders
- Fibromyalgia/Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy
- Managing the Challenging Patient
- Mind/Body/Medicine
- Professionalism
- Rape
- Sexual Dysfunction
- Substance Abuse
- Telephone Medicine
Women's Health
Women's health embraces the spectrum of health-related issues for women, from screening and prevention to management of acute and chronic illness.
- Breast Disease
- Cervical Cancer Screening
- Contraception
- Domestic Violence
- Menopause
- Menstrual Irregularities
- Medication in Pregnancy
- Osteoporosis
- Preconception Counseling
- Pregnancy and Lactation
- Vaginitis/Vulvitis
Brief Clinical Review
The Brief Clinical Review Series was created to address common clinical issues in an evidence-based fashion. A partial list of topics includes:
- Acne
- Cardiac Rehabilitation
- Cholesterol/Cardiac Diet
- Erectile Dysfunction
- Foot Pain and Ankle Injuries
- Fungal Infections
- Group A Strep Pharyngitis
- Heart Murmurs
- Hyperthyroidism
- Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- Knee Pain
- Shoulder Pain
- Skin Neoplasms
- Thyroid Nodules
- Treatment of Latent Tuberculosis
- Urinary Tract Infections
- Weight Loss and the Diabetic Diet
- Wound Care
- Wrist and Elbow Pain
Journal Club
The HCA Journal Club Curriculum promotes evidence-based medicine and critical literature review in the resident's practice. The objective of the program is to study how clinical questions (such as diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment) are answered by solid scientific research involving populations or groups of patients. Participants learn to assess the validity of published evidence by understanding basic clinical research strategies, such as study design and statistical measurement, as well as gaining critical literature appraisal skills.
- Case-Control, Odds Ration, Bias
- Confounding, Stratified Analysis
- Critique of Contemporary Literature
- Decision Analysis
- Diagnostic Tests
- Meta-Analysis
- Multivariable Analysis
- P Value, Cohort, Relative Risk
- Randomize Control Trials, Power, Sample Size
- Survival Analysis
Primary Care Seminar
A dedicated monthly lunch seminar series has been developed to provide training in areas of particular interest to primary care practitioners. Areas of focus this year include office orthopedic evaluation (knee, shoulder), physical/occupational therapy, knee and shoulder injections, cryotherapy, primary care of LGBT patient, and models of primary care. Topics planned for the future include medication adherence, travel medicine, occupational health issues, palliative care Issues, complementary/alternative medicine, and preoperative medical evaluation.