The multisystem disorders course is a capstone course designed to prepare students to manage patients with disease processes that impact multiple organ systems. Students will be expected to use the knowledge they have gained throughout the curriculum to assess, diagnose and manage patients with diseases that affect multiple organ systems. The content for this course will be delivered in a case-based learning format that facilitates the application of foundational sciences into patient care. Basic science and clinical faculty will work together to assimilate practical application of science, evidence-based medicine, critical thinking and clinical reasoning into each learning event.
The primary goal of the course is to help students better understand how certain diseases concurrently disrupt multiple organ systems. Learners will need to differentiate normal multisystem homeostasis from the pathophysiology of disease by applying the basic concepts of biochemistry, nutrition, genetics, immunology, physiology, pathology and pharmacology they mastered from the previous organ-based courses. During each case learners will build a comprehensive differential diagnosis, then identify and justify the use of diagnostic testing to rule in or rule out disease, and develop pharmacologic strategies to manage patients afflicted with a multisystem disorder(s). The multisystem disorders that learners should expect to identify and treat include infectious, immunologic, inflammatory, neoplastic, nutritional, environmental (toxins and extremes), traumatic, abuse, and genetic metabolic disorders.