[Objectives, methods, and resources for undergraduate internal medicine learning].

The teaching of knowledge and clinical skills, considered the classical function of internal medicine professors, is changing towards a new orientation that guides the medical student's apprenticeship and involves strategic changes of both parts. Undergraduate internal medicine teaching must pursue an effective training that will allow an adequate medical practice as a general practitioner, emphasizing the soundness of the clinical method. This methodology requires knowledge in human communications that students must learn and improve during their studies. To allow an adequate clinical training, internal medicine courses must have the necessary duration and schedules and teaching and practicing resources, that facilitate this apprenticeship. Present time hospitals are not the most favorable environment for this purpose, professors must encourage the clinical vocation of their students.