Away Rotation

Elective Opportunity

The Indiana University Department of Emergency Medicine offers a fourth year elective rotation in Emergency Medicine from June to November each year. The goal of the rotation is to give the student an opportunity to care for patients with urgent and emergent medical conditions. Forty to fifty hours of clinical experience per week are scheduled in either the Wishard Emergency Department or the Methodist Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center. Both facilities function as Level 1 trauma centers with large, diverse patient populations and serve as the clinical training sites for our EM residency. Wishard is a county hospital that sees 105,000 patients/year who are primarily adults with medical or traumatic complaints. In addition, Wishard sees critically ill and injured children. The Methodist EMTC is a community based tertiary care center and sees approximately 95,000 patients/year with 28% of that number being pediatric. During the hours the student is scheduled, there are generally two or three Emergency Medicine Board-certified faculty members in the department in addition to the usual complement of resident physicians.

Thus, the emphasis is on supervised patient care to learn Emergency Medicine rather than on just "seeing patients." Students are expected to do the initial evaluation of their own patients and to direct further diagnostic evaluation and therapeutic intervention under the supervision of the faculty and senior residents. There is ample opportunity to learn and perform procedures, and to participate in medical, pediatric, and trauma resuscitations

Sites available for clinical activity

Methodist Hospital- 10 students/mo
EM residency training site, Level 1 Trauma center, community based tertiary center

Wishard Hospital- 10 students/mo
EM Residency Training Site, Level 1 trauma center

Each site will have a site coordinator that will assist the clerkship director with implementation of the clinical activities at their site.

Didactics
Lecture:
The initial 3 days of the rotation are set aside for introductory lectures. These lectures cover the basics and overall approach to emergency medicine. They are designed to bring all students to a general level of understanding of emergency medicine and the approach to the bread and butter of EM care. Students are also welcome and encouraged to attend the EM residency lectures when not scheduled for shifts - these are scheduled for 7-9 every Wednesday and Thursday.

Living Arrangements
Arrangements are made by the visiting students for housing for the month. If you need help or a good place to start your search for arrangements please call or email Jim Graber- see info link...

Grading:
The grade in this rotation will be comprised primarily of the shift evaluations filled out after each shift by the faculty. The remainder of the grade will be determined by the end of rotation quiz (50 multiple choice questions), the case conference presentation and attendance.

More information can be found on the Indiana University Elective Catalog online at "Guest Student."

Clerkship Director: - Butch Humbert, MD
Assistant Clerkship Director: - Bart Besinger, MD
Clerkship Coordinator - Jim Graber

*International Medical Students:
Unfortunately, unless your university has a PRE-EXISTING written agreement with IUSM we are not allowed to accept international students for patient care rotations.