Here in Russia, we clerk patients who were admitted days or weeks before. That means the patients are mostly already investigated, diagnosed and treated. Sometimes, they are already well and awaiting discharge from the hospital.
Elsewhere in the world, medical students need to find new undiagnosed cases, clerk the patients, perform physical examinations, suggesting investigations, provisional diagnosis, differential diagnosis, treatment and present them to the supervising doctors. The doctors shall check these students during their presentation.
That means, students have a big responsibility to get everything right, from clerking, to physical exams, diagnoses and treatments. Students are part of the medical team. They need to do this and that until they become proficeint and they can smoothly transit to residency @ housemanship. This is the way they train them med students, because they’ll be seeing dozens of new cases everyday when they become real doctors…
For us in Russia, seeing old cases is really convenient. Even if you are wrong at first, you’ll get things right after seeing their medical files…
Good read: Twelve Steps for Choosing a Specialty
