Lessons from across the pond: Student perspectives on the Internal Medicine clerkship experience at an Irish and Canadian medical school

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. There is an increasing number of Canadians studying medicine outside of Canada, with a large cohort studying in Ireland. Studying abroad often means different foci in medical training which may make transitioning to residency in a different system more challenging. Students often enter North American elective rotations with little knowledge of student roles and responsibilities. This paper provides insight into the differences in learning objectives and student experiences in an Internal Medicine clerkship at a medical school in Canada and Ireland. Learning objectives are similar between systems; but there is an experiential discordance. In Ireland, clerks see many different patients, gaining exposure to a breadth of topics and clinical signs, but medical student presentations rarely inform decisions around patient care. In Canada, clerks have more direct patient responsibilities, performing physical examinations, reviewing investigations, writing progress notes, and devising management plans as part of their professional development. Overall, the Irish system places emphasis on the mastery of core clinical skills and maximizing breadth of patient exposure whereas the Canadian clerkship is more focused on graduated responsibility and formulating management plans, at the expense of some breadth of exposure. Such discrepancies may not affect the quality of residents, but are important considerations for Canadians studying abroad when repatriating for electives and residencies.