ACE (ALLIANCE FOR CLINICAL EDUCATION) ABSTRACTS: Abstracts from the Proceedings of the 2004 Annual Meeting of the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM)

Abstract

The Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM) is devoted to teaching medical students and represents the allopathic medical schools in the United States and Canada. As CDIM has grown, its focus has broadened beyond the core 3rd-year clerkship in internal medicine to embrace internists who are responsible for their schools' introduction to clinical medicine, multidisciplinary clerkships, and 4th-year courses.CDIM held its 2004 National Meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, from October 14 to October 16, as part of Academic Internal Medicine Week. Themes addressed during the meeting included developing and rewarding excellent medical educators, revitalizing of the 4th year of medical school, and assessing the state of medical education research. The combined Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine (AAIM) format allowed participants to share the expertise of educators at multiple levels of the medical education continuum. Some areas of joint interest included projections on the future of medical education, the effect of residency work-hour restrictions on the entire medical education process, advising students on the residency application process, and mechanisms to revitalize interest in internal medicine. The discussions between clerkship directors, residency program directors, fellowship directors, departmental chairmen, division chiefs, and department administrators were generally felt to strengthen the meeting.s were selected for presentation by the CDIM Program Planning Committee, which worked in conjunction with the AAIM Program Planning Committee. Those submitted for the following publication were felt to demonstrate high quality and originality, to reflect the themes of the meeting, and to be of general interest to readers of Teaching and Learning in Medicine. The presentation by G. Denton, K. DeZee, and S. Durning, "Medical Student Resource Use and Knowledge Acquisition in the Medicine Clerkship," which suggests that use of a standard textbook benefited students with a weak fund of knowledge more than use of electronic sources, is published in this issue of TLM.