Overview

(A) GOAL

The broad goal of the teaching of undergraduate students in Medicine is to have the knowledge, skills and behavioral attributes to function effectively as the first contact physician.

(B) OBJECTIVES

(i) KNOWLEDGE

At the end of the course the student should be able to:

• diagnose common clinical disorders with special reference to infectious diseases, nutritional disorders, tropical and environmental diseases.

• outline various modes of management including drug therapeutics especially dosage, side effects, toxicity, interactions, indications and contra-indications.

• propose diagnostic and investigative procedures and ability to interpret them.

• provide first level management of acute emergencies promptly and efficiently and decide the timing and level of referral, if required.

• recognize geriatric disorders and their management.

(ii) SKILLS

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

• develop clinical skills (history taking, clinical examination and other instruments of examination) to diagnose various common medical disorders and emergencies.
• refer a patient to secondary and/or tertiary level of health care after having instituted primary care.
• perform simple routine investigations like haemogram, stool, urine, sputum and biological fluid examinations.
• assist the common bedside investigative procedures like pleural tap, lumbar puncture, bone marrow aspiration/biopsy and liver biopsy.

(iii) INTEGRATION

(1) with community medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation to have the knowledge and be able to manage important current national health programs, also to be able to view the patient in his/her total physical, social and economic milieu.

(2) with other relevant academic inputs which provide scientific basis of clinical medicine e.g. anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, pathology and pharmacology.