Neurology Core Clerkship

School of Medicine

Patients with neurologic disease have unique and complicated conditions, often requiring subspecialty care. During the Neurology Clerkship, students will care for patients in both a primary and consultative setting, equipping them with the knowledge needed to recognize the need for neurologic care in residency and beyond. During this rotation, students gain exposure to both inpatient and outpatient neurology, in multidisciplinary teams, under the direct supervision of house staff and faculty. Over the course of this four-week rotation, students spend roughly one week on four distinct experiences. These include the inpatient stroke service (which cares for patients with acute cerebrovascular disease), the general neurology service (which cares for patients with diagnosis other than stroke, including seizures, neurologic infections, neuroimmunologic conditions, brain tumors, to name a few), the neurology consult service (which provides consultative care to patients in the emergency department or admitted to the hospital) and outpatient clinics (including epilepsy, cognitive/behavioral, neuro-oncology, movement disorders, child neurology, stroke, general neurology, sleep, among others). Students will have additional didactic experiences including small-group case vignette discussions, subspecialty education (peripheral neurology, epilepsy, pediatric neurology), a neuroanatomy quiz, twice-weekly morning report, weekly departmental chairman’s rounds focusing on neurologic localization and diagnostic reasoning, and weekly departmental grand rounds. The Neurology Core Clerkship is one of the 6 required core clerkships that comprise the Foundations of Clinical Care (FCC) Phase during the second year of VUSM’s MD curriculum.