Length of Clerkship: 4 weeks (With an option to add a 2 week elective for those who really want to do Neuro)
Call: Q4-5 for 4 weeks (short call) at Rush, Q2 at County.
Lectures:
| RUSH: | Lectures weekly with clerkship director or other attendings; informally with residents regularly. |
| County | No formal lectures at County, but morning teaching sessions with attendings 2-3 times/wk. |
Presentations: Short presentation on a broad neuro subject at Rush; County Attendings will ask you to look up topics that come up while on Rounds.
Miniboard: Know how to localize lesions! Note that muscular diseases fall under neurology and are definitely fair game.
Pocket Contents: Reflex hammer; tuning fork of the proper frequency (128 mHz and 512 mHz); pocket handbook; safety pins for testing sensation.
Helpful Hints: It may be useful to you to review each of the tracts (e.g., dorsal columns, spinothalamics, corticospinals, etc.) just before you start the rotation. You will see a lot of CTs and MRIs on Neuro, which can be a great learning experience that will really help you in other rotations.
Neurology Suggested Reading:
Handbooks:
Little Black Book of Neurology, ISBN 0323014151. This pocket-sized book provides a useful introduction to the field of neurology. Organized like a medical dictionary, its alphabetical entries provide you with definitions, classification, diagnosis and treatment. Has details about every disease imaginable. Not meant to be read cover-to-cover; useful for pulling out when the attending is explaining something over your head.
House Officer Series: Neurology, 7e. ISBN: 0781747473: This pocket book is good for looking up general topics in Neuro, and for quick reading in a few moments of downtime (especially at County, while waiting to present in clinic).
Study Guides/Question Books:
Introduction to Clinical Neurology by Gelb, ISBN 0750672021. Half study guide, half textbook, this is the introductory source that the clerkship director recommends. Thankfully, it is written for medical students and walks you through the basics of everything from strokes to headaches. It not only explains “what”, but also “why”. You can easily get through it in 4 weeks.
Blueprints Neurology, ISBN 0632045396. Like other books from this series, this book walks you through the basics of neurology. If you tend to like the short, simple format of the Blueprints series, this book will satisfy you. However, if you prefer lots of details and in depth explanations, this will not be the book for you. Many students complemented it with Blueprints Cases in Clinical Neurology, ISBN 0632046139.
Pre-Test Neurology, ISBN 0071360999. Like other books from this series, Pre-test covers a broad range of neurology material. Although the vignettes are shorter than the mini-board, the content is fairly representative.