Clinical Reasoning Through CPCs

HST312: Clinical Reasoning Through CPCS

This course is offered weekly throughout the school year, on Thursdays from 4-6:30 pm through HST.  It is open to MD students who are taking a "5th year" to do research as well as MD-PhD students who have already completed their qualifying exams. Others are permitted with instructor approval.  This new longitudinal course will allow students in research labs to maintain clinical connections while developing and refining clinical reasoning through discussion and dissection of New England Journal of Medicine Clinical Pathologic Conferences (CPCs). The format will involve students reading a case presentation before each class meeting, discussing the case presentation in class, arriving at a differential diagnosis, and discussing the NEJM expert's differential diagnosis, before evaluating the pathological diagnosis and management. The clinical entities to be discussed involve a spectrum of diseases including inflammatory, toxic-metabolic, infectious, vascular, neoplastic, endocrine, genetic and degenerative, thereby providing students with a broad overview of multiple pathogenic entities over the course of a year. The Course Director is Professor Thomas Byrne, MD (tnbyrne@partners.org).