Educational Purpose & Goals Infectious Diseases differs from all other disciplines in medicine in that it is not focused on a particular organ or physiologic system. Unique to the specialty is the required consideration of (at least) 2 interacting organisms (pathogen and host) in any scenario.
Success in clinical infectious disease requires a thorough understanding of anatomy and physiology, immunology, microbiology, public health and pharmacology. The breadth of the specialty is well beyond the scope of a 2 hour teaching session or a 6 week clinical rotation.
For the 3rd year medical student we will focus on broadly relevant topic areas with the expectation that the student will be able to recognize presenting signs and symptoms and apply these to formulate a differentiate diagnosis and develop diagnostic and therapeutic plans.
The student shall be able to integrate knowledge gained from the basic sciences into understanding disease physiology, microbiology, transmission, prevention and pharmacology.
The eight major topic areas include:
Acute meningitis Urinary tract infections Skin and soft tissue infections Fever of unknown origin Complications of HIV infection Infections due toStaphylococcus aureus Zoonotic infections Infectious diarrhea
Teaching Method Case based, small group interactive between the professor and the students. The scope of topics is beyond the time allotted for the interactive session; consequently, students will need to review the cases and read prior to this session.
