Overview
The Endocrine Consult Service is a clinical rotation that provides house officers exposure to the diagnosis and treatment of endocrine disease, both in the inpatient and outpatient setting. The endocrine consult team consists of a supervising attending physician, an endocrinology fellow, one or more residents/interns, and one or more medical student(s). The rotation lasts two to four weeks.
Teaching Methods
Patient Rounds – The intern/resident on the consult will round daily prior to team rounds to evaluate new consults of the day, as well as to follow up on test results and response to management interventions on active old patients.
Endocrine Consult Team Rounds – The Endocrine Consult Service rounds daily to discuss issues pertaining to care of the patients on the service. These interactive rounds focus on integrating pertinent patient history, physical exam findings, and information from the primary team/consultation services to formulate a diagnostic evaluation and management strategy.
Teaching Rounds – In addition to patient care rounds, the Endocrine Consult Team holds rounds to review pertinent general medical topics. These rounds include, but are not limited to, presentations given by attendings, fellows, housestaff, and students.
Endocrine Clinic– The intern/resident will attend 4 half-days of endocrinology clinics per week while rotating on the endocrine consult service.
Lectureship – The following lectures augment the Endocrine Consult Service educational program:
- Endorama
- Endocrine Lecture Series
- Endocrine Journal Club
- Endocrine Research Conference
Disease and Patient Characteristics
Major Disease Categories:
- Diabetes Mellitus
- Type I Diabetes Mellitus
- Type II Diabetes Mellitus
- Gestational Diabetes
- Treatment of Diabetes
- Complications of Diabetes
- Hypoglycemia in Nondiabetics
- Hyperlipoproteinemia
- Increased LDL
- Increased triglycerides
- Decreased HDL
- Disorders of the Pituitary Gland
- Hypopituitarism
- Pituitary Tumors
- Prolactinoma
- Acromegaly
- Non-functioning Pituitary Tumors
- Pituitary Incidentalomas
- Disorders of the Thyroid Gland
- Hypothyroidism
- Hyperthyroidism
- Thyroid nodules
- Sick Euthyroid Syndrome
- Disorders of the Adrenal Gland
- Adrenal Insufficiency
- Cushing’s syndrome
- Adrenal Incidentaloma
- Pheochromoctyoma
- Primary Aldosteronism
- Reproductive Endocrine Disorders
- Male Hypogonadism
- Female Reproductive Disorders
- Calcium and Bone Disorders
- Hypercalcemia
- Hypocalcemia
- Osteoporosis
Patient Characteristics
Adult patients with general medical disease admitted from clinic, the emergency room, directly from home or transferred from other hospitals. Patients originating from the surrounding communities as well as from areas including Northern Indiana extending up to the northern suburbs.
Supervision
The attending physician is responsible for ensuring the highest level of care to patients admitted to their resident team. This is accomplished through regular supervision of the work completed by the resident, intern and students on the team. The attending should see and evaluate all patients at admission. They should see and evaluate all patients on a daily basis throughout the entire admission. In both cases, the plan of care should be reviewed with the housestaff team delivering appropriate feedback where necessary. The attending should be available 24 hours a day to the housestaff team for question or concerns arising in the course of patient care.
Evaluation
- Communication of Expectations
- Ongoing Verbal Feedback
- Daily
- Mid-rotation Feedback
- Formative
- Structured
- Comprehensive
- End of Rotation Feedback
- Summative
- Structured
- Comprehensive
- End of Rotation Evaluation
- Summative
- Written / New Innovations
- Comprehensive
- Team Members Evaluated
- Intern
- Resident
- Attending