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Surgery Clerkship

Bakr M. Nour M.D., FACS, Clerkship Director
Deema Al-Sheikhly, MRes, Clinical Curriculum Coordinator
Yoga Hassan, Clinical Curriculum Assistant

The third year clerkship in Surgery consists of a twelve (12) week cycle: Eight (8) weeks of General Surgery, one (1) week Anesthesia, and three (3) weeks of elective.

Grading for the eight (8) week General Surgery experience is on a Pass, High-Pass, Honors basis. The three (3) weeks of electives and one (1) week of Anesthesia is graded on a Pass/Fail basis. The Surgery Team Evaluations, Tutor Evaluation, Oral Exam, and Written Exam are all taken into account when determining the final grade and the weighting for each is as follows:

• Written Exam/Oral Exam - 50%
• Team Evaluations/Tutor Evaluations - 50%

Students are expected to attend lectures that will take place at Hamad Medical Corporation each day between 3pm and 5pm during the clerkship. (During the holy month of Ramadan between 2pm and 4pm).

During the core clerkship in surgery, the students will learn about “surgical” illnesses, so that no matter what area of medicine they choose for their career, they will be able to diagnose and plan for the care of patients who need surgery.

By the end of the core clerkship, each student is expected to:

• Gain an overall knowledge of surgical illnesses and the important steps in the decision process for treating these conditions
• Understand the physiology of an acutely injured patient, whether this injury is from
  • Trauma
  • Burns
  • Infection
  • Surgery
• Learn the basic principles governing wound care,
  • Suturing
  • Management of tissue infections
• Learn how to assess an acute abdomen
• Learn about nutritional support and its role in treating severely ill patients
• Learn about the different surgical subspecialties, about anesthesia, and about the day-to-day practices of the staff surgeons.
• Become familiar with some procedures that are important to critical care:
  • Central lines
  • Intubations (Be on hand in the OR at the beginning of each case)
  • Chest tubes
  • Suturing

Students should be a crucial part of the surgery team; the better they are able to integrate themselves into the team’s daily responsibilities, the more they will get out of the surgery rotation.

They are encouraged to:

• Do the dressing changes so that they can check wounds
• Keep track of the I & 0’s
• Scrutinize each lab value
• See every one of their patient’s x-rays
• Be present for special studies such as endoscopies, CT scans, or ultrasounds
• Try to know more about their patients than anyone else on the service

Each medical student will be assigned to a consultant or senior specialist in one of the teams. The student is expected to be present every day at morning report from 7 - 8am. They are encouraged to pre-round on any assigned patient prior to morning report.

At the end of morning report, the student will report to their respective assigned clinician and proceed to accompany them to that day’s activity. Activities will include OR, clinic or rounds.