Courses

The listing of a course description here does not guarantee a course’s being offered in a particular semester. Please refer to the published schedule of classes on the Student Link for confirmation a class is actually being taught and for specific course meeting dates and times.

BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine Required Courses

• MED MS 102: Ambulatory Med.
  
• MED MS 121: Doctoring 1
  Doctoring 1 is a year-long course in the first year where students learn foundational doctoring skills. The course is structured in case-based small groups that allow for clinical interviews with a faculty member or a standardized patient so that students can learn and practice communication skills and data gathering, doctor-patient relationship building, physical examinations, clinical reasoning, case presentation and documentation skills. Further, these cases will promote integration of foundational and social science topics students are learning in their other courses and provide an opportunity for self-directed learning. At the end of each session, students will identify learning needs related to the case, and each will select a topic to research. The following week, students will teach their classmates about the topic they researched to further the group's understanding of the case. Students will have clinical placements in the hospital during the fall, with a longitudinal preceptor in the spring. During their clinical placements, students will apply and practice the content they have learned in their small groups through interviewing patients and performing physical exams. Students will learn team-building skills and will reflect on topics surrounding professionalism, ethics, and professional identify formation. This course is a merger of the previously offered Integrated Problems 1 and Introduction to Clinical Medicine 1 courses and is designed to deliberately integrate clinical reasoning and clinical skills.
• MED MS 135: Pisces 1-Key Themes, Found. 1,Found 2
  
• MED MS 136: Pisces 2-Foundations 3, Genomic Medicine, Cardiovascular
  
• MED MS 137: Learn, Experience, Advocate, Discover & Serve 1
  
• MED MS 147: Pisces 3-Pulmonary & Renal
  
• MED MS 148: Pisces 4-Endocrinology & Reproduction & Hematology
  
• MED MS 227: Doctoring 2
  Doctoring 2 is a year-long course in the second year in which students build off their experience in Doctoring 1. The course is structured in case-based small groups that allow for clinical interviews with a faculty member or a standardized patient so students can learn and practice advanced communication skills and hypothesis-driven data gathering and physical examinations, including advanced clinical exam maneuvers. There will be a strong emphasis on clinical reasoning and both identifying and mitigating cognitive biases. Students will refine and expand their case presentation and note-writing skills and will learn to use the electronic medical record. Cases will promote integration of foundational and social science topics and provide an opportunity for self-directed learning. At the end of each session, students will identify learning needs related to the case and each will take a topic to research. The following week, students will teach their classmate about the topic they researched to further the group's understanding of the case. Students will have a variety of additional simulation sessions and standardized patient interviews to further their skills. They will continue their clinical placements with a longitudinal preceptor in the fall and will return to the hospital during the winter/spring to further advance their clinical skills in preparation for their clinical clerkships. Students will further their teamwork skills and competence in building a therapeutic alliance with patients and will reflect on topics surrounding professionalism, ethics, and professional identify formation. This course is a merger of the previously offered Integrated Problems 2 and Introduction to Clinical Medicine 2 courses and is designed to deliberately integrate clinical reasoning and clinical skills.
• MED MS 228: C&P Clerkships
  
• MED MS 230: Pisces 5-Key Themes, Neurology & Psychiatry
  
• MED MS 231: Pisces 6-GI&Nutrition,Derm.,Rheum.,Musculoskeletal
  
• MED MS 232: Pisces 7A-Integration Weeks
  
• MED MS 233: Learn, Experience, Advocate, Discover & Serve 2
  
• MED MS 310: Medicine 1 Clerkship (8 weeks)
  The Medicine 1 Clerkship is an eight-week experience 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 Center (Framingham), Beth Israel Deaconess--Plymouth, Beth Israel Deaconess-Needham, Berkshire Medical Center (Pittsfield, MA) and Roger Williams Medical Center (Providence, RI). In addition, some students will take the entire eight-week clerkship at the Kaiser Health Care System in California.
• MED MS 311: Surgery Clerkship (8 weeks)
  MED MS 311:Surgery Clerkship (eight weeks) During the eight-week Surgery Clerkship, students are assigned to a four-week rotation in general surgery at one of six sites: Boston Medical Center, the West Roxbury VA Hospital, Cape Cod Hospital, Roger Williams Medical Center, MetroWest, Berkshires Medical Center or Kaiser Santa Clara Medical Center. Students also do two rotations (two weeks each) of other surgical subspecialties such as vascular surgery, anesthesiology, minimally invasive surgery, or acute care/trauma surgery, and a limited number of slots in orthopedics, urology, and otolaryngology. Each of these rotations includes experience in the OR. All rotations except anesthesiology include experience as part of the surgical team caring for patients on the surgical wards, and outpatient care in surgical clinics. Students work directly with faculty in the OR, in the clinic, and in regular meetings with their preceptors. All students (except those at Kaiser and the Berkshires) return to Boston Medical Center for didactics on Fridays, and they participate in educational conferences with the residents and attendings.
• MED MS 312: MED MS 312: Obstetrics and Gynecology Clerkship (six weeks)
  An Obstetrics and Gynecology Clerkship is one of the core clinical rotations in the medical school curriculum due to its unique focus on female reproductive health and dysfunction. In addition, OB/GYN providers are Women's Health advocates who promote education, safe pregnancy, health maintenance and prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, and reproductive cancers. This clerkship emphasizes the doctor-patient relationship, interviewing skills, mastery of the pelvic and breast examination, patient safety, and clinical problem solving in patient care. The foundation that students will gain--in obtaining skills and knowledge to become a comprehensive health provider for women--will be integral to their education in health care and policy, regardless of future specialty choice. For clerkship students interested in women's health, there is ample opportunity to familiarize themselves with the wide variety of career choices available within the field of Obstetrics and Gynecology. We are very proud of the opportunities for the students to improve core skills in screening patients for lack of material resources. Your clerkship will anchor you in the context of safe care with workshops in learning from error. There are nine locations of the clerkship available: Boston Medical Center, BMC/Lahey Clinic (inpatient gyn), MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham (MWMC), Beverly Hospital in Beverly, Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Lahey Medical Center in Burlington, Beth Israel Plymouth, Kaiser San Jose, and St. Elizabeth's, Brighton.
• MED MS 313: Pediatric Clerkship (6 weeks)
  MED MS 313: Pediatric Clerkship (six weeks) During the six-week Pediatric Clerkship, students will gain experience in clinical pediatrics by rotating at one of the clerkship's unique sites. At the clerkship sites, students may have the opportunity to participate in pediatric care on a number of clinical services, including: the inpatient ward, outpatient primary care and subspecialty clinics, emergency room, newborn nursery, and perhaps a NICU and/or PICU. Up to two students per block can elect to complete this rotation at Kaiser Permanente Santa Clara, a busy pediatric referral hospital for the Kaiser system in California, where students will see a broad variety of pediatric illness - from common to rare presentations - as well has have engaging ambulatry and nursery experiences. One student per block can elect into the new rural pediatric medicine track at MACONY Pediatrics in the Berkshires. This student will see a broad variety of routine health maintenace as well as acute pediatric medical care in an ambulatory setting for six weeks, gaining appreciation and knowledge about optimizing outpatient medical care where pediatric inpatient medical services are less readily available.
• MED MS 314: MED MS 314: Psychiatry Clerkship (6 weeks)
  In the Psychiatry Clerkship, medical students will be assigned to a site where they will see and interview patients who are suffering from many different types of mental health disorders. In addition, students will participate in a weekly, three-hour didactic seminar located at BUSM, where they will hear presentations covering topics including anxiety and mood disorders, schizophrenia, and substance use disorders. Medical students will learn how to diagnose various mental health disorders, they will learn evidence-based treatments, and they will gain a greater understanding of how mental health and social factors can influence health.
• MED MS 315: Family Medicine Clerkship (6 weeks)
  MED MS 315: Family Medicine Clerkship (six weeks) In the Family Medicine Clerkship, students work in high-volume ambulatory care practices of family physicians and residency programs. Over the course of the clerkship, students learn to understand and promote a patient-centered model of care; to understand the Family Medicine approach to seeing and evaluating patients and families with undifferentiated problems, and develop the clinical reasoning that guides the definition and diagnosis of such problems; to develop skills in the management of frequently occurring acute and chronic problems; to understand the patient as part of a family and community; to understand and use a comprehensive and continuous approach to care; to understand and use the concepts of Information Mastery, including Patient-Oriented Evidence that Matters, the Usefulness Equation, and point-of-care EBM resources to guide patient care decisions; to understand and use techniques of evidence-based preventive medicine and health promotion; and to understand population health, health management, and the importance of primary care in the health care system.
• MED MS 316: Neurology Clerkship (4 weeks)
  Students at Boston University School of Medicine are required to participate in a four-week Neurology Clerkship in the third year. The goal of the clerkship is to teach students how a neurologist thinks about disease, gaining a solid foundation in the neurological history and examination, and the interpretation and significance of, neurological examination findings. Much attention is devoted to clinical-anatomical correlation and refining the skills of "lesion localization." Students spend their clinical time in both the inpatient/consultation service and the outpatient clinics. Students are expected to spend most of their time on the adult services, but there is also opportunity to spend time with the Pediatric Neurology group. There are weekly didactic sessions with a senior faculty member that concentrate on clinical problem solving. Clinically relevant reading material and the cases to be discussed in the didactic sessions are provided on the clerkship's Blackboard site. Students utilize the lumbar puncture simulator to increase their technical proficiency.

Back to full list of Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine