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The goal of Professor Rounds is to have students learn clinical reasoning using a case-based format. Each session will have a different focus based on a medicine subspecialty. Students have been assigned to present on a given day. The two to four students who are assigned for a given day will decide which student has the best case to present. The presentation should be just like presenting on morning rounds (giving full HPI, PMH, meds, FH/SH, ROS, relevant labs/EKG/xray and assessment and plans). For each case, one of the students does the presenting (the one who knows the patient the best) while one of the others writes on the board and perhaps helps out with any general content knowledge.

A subspecialty attending will help run the session. These faculty members have been running these sessions for a number of years. They are all great clinicians and teachers. The attendings will likely stop the presentations often to ask the students in the audience for their thoughts (like what other questions they want to ask the patient, what is the differential diagnosis, what labs would they order, etc). So all in all, the students in the audience speak as much as (or even more than) the presenters.

From the beginning of the clerkship students should begin trying to identify a case for each session. Students presenting later in the clerkship should be able to find cases at the beginning of the second rotation. Students presenting earlier, however, need to keep their eyes and ears open for possible cases. The cases do not need to be complicated or anything rare. In fact, the more “bread and butter”, the better. For example, for the cardiovascular diseases session, possible cases might involve chest pain (or an actual MI) or congestive heart failure. For the pulmonary diseases session, possible cases might involve asthma, COPD, pneumonia or pleural effusion. Students should contact Dr. Klipstein if they have questions about finding appropriate cases.

Once students have an appropriate case, then they just need to prepare the H&P as usual and make sure they understand the clinical reasoning behind the assessment and plan. Again, we will be pimping (in a friendly way) the audience about the assessment and plans more than we will be pimping the presenters.