The Medical School has instituted a new academic program this year, stressing smaller classes and 50 percent fewer lectures.
Students now follow an interdisciplinary course of study and focus on combining basic science and clinical medicine with patient interaction and independent study.
The curriculum was changed in order to keep the program up to date, faculty said. "We basically felt that we needed to adjust the curriculum to make it more progressive," said Donald J. Innes, assoc. dean of curriculum at the Medical School.
The program replaces a curriculum that separated basic and clinical sciences and did not emphasize interaction with patients until later in students' academic careers.
In a meeting with the Board of Visitors' Health Affairs Committee earlier this month, Medical School Dean Robert M. Carey told the board students will have new opportunities for practical problem solving and interactive instruction under the new curriculum.
The revamped program will have the most dramatic effect on the students' first years. Boasting a 6:2 student to faculty ratio, a new course entitled "The Practice of Medicine" educates students in patient interviewing, biomedical ethics and professionalism.
Second-year students previously were offered a course with a similar interdisciplinary emphasis that now will be the second-year counterpart to "The Practice of Medicine."
"The new curriculum has been wonderfully received by students," Dean of Student Affairs Richard Pearson said. "Students seem particularly excited about having more opportunities for independent study."
Innes led a 10-member faculty committee that initiated the change after conducting an extensive curriculum review last year. The group evaluated reports on the curriculum of the basic sciences and clinical medicine gathered by two other committees.
The curriculum has four objectives: to integrate and coordinate basic and clinical experiences throughout students' four years; to expand students' creativity, expression and elective opportunities; to balance lecture, problem-based learning, patient experiences and study time, and to create time in early years for frequent patient contact.
The resulting program, according to Carey, combines outstanding attributes of the previous program with essentials that had been missing.
"There are always ways to improve curriculum," Innes said. "One of our purposes in last year's review was to find them"
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