BCC 8116: Skin and Bones Medicine Elective

Drs. Joanne Valeriano, Mary Lien, Larry Collins and Faculty  (Tampa)

Dr. James Ross (LVHN)

Skin and Bones is a multi-disciplinary four-week elective designed to enhance the student’s competence in the recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of musculoskeletal, rheumatologic and dermatologic disorders. The clinical experience, designed to gain exposure to rheumatology, sports medicine, orthopedics (outpatient injury assessment and management) and dermatology, is tailored to the student’s specialty track. Unlike the third year clerkship rotations, Skin and Bones clinical experiences are primarily outpatient –based. Students are given instruction followed by hands-on experience in various procedures used in each of these specialties.

Didactic highlights include

• Skin biopsy and suturing workshop providing hands on experience.
• Injection and aspiration workshop utilizing injection models, followed by clinical experiences to learn to perform joint injections and aspirations on patients with direct supervision.
• Opportunity to become familiar with hands-on musculoskeletal ultrasound in a clinical setting.
• Didactics and clinical exposure to musculoskeletal diagnostic imaging.
• Online and live didactics and knowledge self-checks aimed at providing a basis for increasing knowledge in these specialties serving as a great preparation for USMLE.

Objectives

1. Apply the skills and medical knowledge learned during the didactic sessions to evaluate patients in rheumatology, dermatology, orthopedics, and sports medicine clinics and perform an appropriate history and physical examination, design an appropriate differential diagnosis, and diagnostic and therapeutic plans for the more common systemic rheumatic disease, dermatologic, orthopedic/sports medicine, and musculoskeletal diseases
2. Recognize the clinical, laboratory, and radiographic features of the more common rheumatologic, dermatologic, orthopedic and musculoskeletal diseases
3. Understand the pathophysiology of the common rheumatologic, dermatologic, orthopaedic, and musculoskeletal diagnoses 

(In Tampa, other sites that may be included are Morsani, USF South, Tampa General Hospital, the James A. Haley VA Hospital, and some private practices.)

This course is NOT available to visiting students.