The Medicine 1 Clerkship is an 8-week experience that is designed to enhance the student's capacity to function as a caring, increasingly independent but supervised clinician on a multiprofessional team. During the clerkship, students learn clinical medicine while working side by side with residents and faculty in providing care to a cohort of inpatients. A key principle that guides student learning is to provide graduated responsibility with supervision. Medicine 1 introduces the clinical tools and perspectives of the internist that are appropriate regardless of the student's career choice. This learning experience is complemented by a unique enrichment in which students also work closely in small groups with a Clerkship Director and hone essential clinical skills (including intermediate level communications skills, physical diagnosis, and clinical reasoning). The clerkship is divided into two mini blocks of four weeks each, and students learn at two of the following sites: Boston Medical Center, the West Roxbury VA Hospital, MetroWest Medical Cener (Framingham), Jordan Hospital (Plymouth), and Roger Williams Medical Center (Providence, R.I.).