Infectious Disease

ELEC617 / PMDN 613

Department
Internal Medicine

Clinical or Non-Clinical Course
Clinical

Physician Assessed Patient Facing
Yes

Prerequisites
Completion of Phase 2 Internal Medicine Clerkship

Goal
Students will work on a one-to-one basis with the infectious disease specialist assigned to teaching infectious disease consult service. They are expected to learn about the pathophysiology of infectious disease, differential diagnosis, and principles of antimicrobial therapy. They will gain knowledge of infectious disease problems by bedside teaching, lectures, and conferences. There will be an opportunity to see a broad spectrum of clinical problems including common community-acquired infections, AIDS, nosocomial infections, and infections related to immunosuppression, surgery (+/- pregnancy). This subspecialty elective is largely inpatient based but could also have an outpatient component upon request from individual student. Students will not be seeing any COVID-19 patients and will have minimal or no contact with them. They will be required to wear masks and other appropriate PPE’s during their encounter with non-COVID patients.

Objectives
At the end of this course, the student will be able to:

  1. Learn to evaluate patients presenting with a wide range of infectious problems. They will take a comprehensive history with emphasis on clinical presentation, epidemiologic risk factors for infectious diseases, and predisposing medical conditions.
  2. Observe and perform physical examinations with particular attention paid to common physical findings associated with important infectious problems.
  3. Generate a differential diagnosis with particular attention paid to the most probable and the most serious causes of a patient’s complaints.
  4. Learn appropriate empiric antimicrobial regimens for a wide range of clinical situations, followed by selection of targeted therapy for de-escalation based on microbiology/culture data.
  5. Understand the particular indications and complications of a wide range of antimicrobials.

Method of Assessment

  • Standard Clinical 2wk Elective Evaluation - Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory
  • Standard Clinical 4wk Elective Evaluation - Honors/High Pass/Pass/Fail

Additional Methods

Course Director
Rone Lin, MD

Course Coordinator
Ashley Finney
afinney@uic.edu
309-840-7268

Location
SFMC

Setting
Inpatient

Night Call
No

Laboratory
No

Weekends
No

House Staff
Yes

Number of Learners per Block
2 per 4 week block

Duration
2 or 4 weeks

Who is this elective available to
M4s (in Phase 3)

Blocks Available
All except winter break.