Educational-clinical activities

The ward has two teams of qualified doctors. The residents and the 5th-year medical students are equally distributed in the two groups. All the Clinic's medical staff must participate in the educational process.

• Morning briefing

The staff is informed about the previous day's events (new admissions, transfers, and calls for consultation from other wards), general clinical care issues, a recap of questions of the prior morning briefing based on bibliographic data, and scheduling of patient discharges.

• Ward rounds

These are made daily through "ambulatory visits" and "bedside" teaching. The primary purpose is a detailed analysis of the cases, including the formulation of the differential diagnosis in each case, the discussion of the correct diagnosis, the order of tests, treatment, and the need to call medical consultants.

These visits provide the opportunity to learn how to deal with each nosological entity for case presentations and even for the proper functioning of the team that cares for the patients. The attending physicians must take care to teach techniques of history taking, clinical examination, and performing medical procedures.

• Director's ward round

It takes place once a week and includes "bedside" teaching and quality control of the medical file and patient's course in general.

• Joint meetings with radiology

These meetings are held once a month. Clinical findings are correlated with imaging findings, and the rational use of imaging methods is discussed.

• Weekly educational activities

They include:

1. Lectures by invited speakers

2. Lectures by faculty members

3. Lectures by researchers on research protocols

4. Update on various subspecialties' issues

5. Discussions of selected patient cases

In each of these cases, the pathologic findings are presented, and the omissions and "preventable" events are discussed.

• Journal clubs

It takes place twice a week. The articles presented are original and critically presented.