• Undergraduate
  • Medicine Year 2
  • Medicine Year 3
  • Medicine Year 4 - 5
  • Dental Year 3 (PDF: 160KB)
• Postgraduate

Undergraduate Education Programme Coordinator Dr Adrian LOW: mdclowa@nus.edu.sg Ms Colleen TANG: mdctwe@nus.edu.sg 6772 4352 Ms Tri Cia TAN: mdcttc@nus.edu.sg 6772 4738 Ms Hui Min LIM: mdclhm@nus.edu.sg 6772 4662

• Medicine Year 2
• Medicine Year 3

Medicine Year 2

Clinical Skills Foundation course

Medicine Clinical Skills Foundation Course
A 7-week course at the end of the second year serves to equip medical students with basic clinical and communication skills in preparation for clinical training. The approach is system-analysis orientated and based primarily on lecture/bedside demonstration by senior clinical tutors and intensive clinical exposure. A Clinical Skills Laboratory is used to teach medical students basic procedural, physical examination and communication skills.

Medicine Year 3

Medicine Posting, Remedial Posting

Students are now introduced to real patients earlier in their education (from the first year) to stimulate interest and encourage correlation to their basic science studies. However, formal clinical rotations to clinical medicine begin in Year 3.

Upon commencement of the clinical clerkships, a significant proportion of time is spent in the hospitals, dealing with daily issues in patient management. This marks the start of a lifelong interaction with patients and fellow physicians. These clinical postings are not unplanned and include preparatory programs to assist in their integration, including the use of simulators such as the SimMan in vascular access as well as electronic aides to hone auscultation skills.

The 3rd year Medicine posting is a structured program with attachment to a senior staff. Medical students are instructed in the evaluation of a patient at presentation; this includes appropriate history taking skills as well as physical examination techniques. Bedside tutorials will also be conducted regularly and the students are expected to be able to perform a satisfactory history and physical examination. They are also taught presentation skills as communication is a major aspect in clinical medicine. Apart from bedside tutorials, the students are also expected to submit case write-ups detailing the approach to a patient and appropriate management.

Clinical Clerkships
In Year 3, students spend 8 weeks of full day postings as a clinical clerk in a medical unit. For Year 5, the students are posted to a medical unit as a clinical clerk and junior houseman for 16 weeks (including two weeks for dermatology, infectious disease, medicine and geriatrics and a 4-week Student Internship Programme). The goals of the clinical teaching programme are to:

• consolidate the history taking, physical examination and diagnostic skills of the students;
• train students to become thinking doctors with the habit of lifelong learning;
• ensure that students develop good bedside manners and communication skills;
• ensure that students are able to function as effective house officers on graduation.

To help clinical students attain these goals, a comprehensive programme of bedside tutorials, teaching ward rounds, case analyses, log book record, specialty sessions, acute medicine rounds, night duties and an embedded student internship programme of 4 weeks have been drawn up during their medical attachment. At the end of each posting, the students will be evaluated on daily performance, case analysis, MCQ and a clinical test.

Systematic Course
The systematic course consists of a series of lectures delivered during clinical postings in the third year and is available on the NUS Intranet Online for final year students. The lectures cover core topics in medicine and therapeutics. A list of core clinical cases is made available to all medical students. They are guided and encouraged to make use of computers especially for self learning.