MEDICAL THEORY AND ACTING AS PHYSICIAN IN THE CLINICAL MEDICAL-EDUCATION - EXPERIENCES DURING CLERKSHIP IN INTERNAL-MEDICINE

Insufficient acquisition of clinical skills is recognized as a major deficit in German undergraduate medical education. In contrast to most medical schools in the Western countries, undergraduate students have only superficial contacts with patients on the wards and in outpatient clinics. In this paper we report experiences with a 3 weeks clerkship at the university of Ulm and the problems that arose in the conduction of the course. Based on these experiences the clerkship in Internal Medicine is presently evaluated and optimized in the frame of an educational experiment. Preliminary results of the process evaluation and first steps of optimizing the clerkship are presented.