ICC 7001: What is ICC?

So, what is ICC, anyways? I've been telling everyone who asks me that it is essentially an orientation week for rising third-year medical students about to start their very first clinical rotations. That's partly true.

Now that I have gone through my first ICC, I can affirmatively tell you what it is. ICC stands for Integrated Clinician's Course. Similar to the Foundations of Doctoring course that is spread out across all four years of medical school, ICC is spread out over the last two clinical years. Quoting from the packet of information given to us at the beginning of the week, ICC has two specific goals:

The first is to provide important skills and knowledge in areas that are vital to the practice of medicine, but often difficult to teach in the clinical care setting. These topics include health policy, ethics, clinical decision-making, and cultural competency, as well as clinically relevant basic science material and advanced clinical skills, particularly those that span multiple disciplines. The second but no less important goal is to provide time and opportunity to rhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifeflect on and discuss the process of becoming a physician.

We've had some informational lectures about the clinical years; we've had some educational lectures on topics such as the history of health care in the United States (literally from colonial times to the current health care debate), coping with death and dying, end-of-life planning, and the legal obligations of medicine.

We completed another basic cardiac life support (BCLS) training session, which was notable for changing the alphabet from ABC to CAB. The new CPR guidelines say to prioritize chest compressions and worry about airway and breathing second. We also completed intubation and IV workshops, which were both helpful even though I've done them before.

I'll talk about some of the more memorable sessions in other posts.