Drexel University (College of Medicine)

THE INTERDISCIPLINARY FOUNDATIONS OF MEDICINE CURRICULUM (IFM) Allows first-year students to immediately begin confronting clinical issues. Clinical symptoms, symptom groups and cases provide the framework for an interdisciplinary presentation of curriculum content. Using symptom-based modules of varying length, basic science and clinical faculty present information from the biomedical, psychosocial and clinical sciences, including clinical skills, in a lecture-based and hands-on format. Each basic science discipline teaches the material needed to meet its overall learning objectives in an order of presentation that best facilitates a student's grasp of concept and content. Discipline-specific and integrated lectures, labs, small-group sessions with both basic science professors and clinicians, and community-based clinical experiences are an integral part of the curriculum. FIRST YEAR COURSES * Behavioral Science : Covers the following concepts: the stigma associated with mental illness and the field of psychiatry; the value and need for both evidence-based and anecdotal data; problems in defining psychological normality; problems in labeling psychiatric disorders, and an introduction to a few elementary clinically descriptive terms. * Community Educational Experience : The CEE Course is designed to provide a practice experience in the community with the goals of providing a service and learning how community factors impact on health and the delivery of health care. To be fully understood the experience should be seen as analogous to an experience in a doctor's office or in the hospital. We spend time with physicians to learn the science and art of medicine. Similarly, the experience in the community provides an opportunity to observe some of the complex psycho-socioeconomic issues that impact a patient's health and the delivery of health care in the Philadelphia Community. * Gross Anatomy : Basic anatomy of the spinal cord and spinal nerves. Description of the roots and rami of the spinal nerve, and their relationship to the intervertebral foramen. The distribution of dorsal and ventral primary rami and the formation of nerve plexuses. * Introduction to Ambulatory Care * Medical Biochemistry : Water as a biological solvent, acid-base chemistry (pH, pK, Henderson-Hasselbalch equation),equilibrium (Gibbs free energy, coupled reactions, K), kinetics (activation energy, catalysts). Introdution to nucleic acids; DNA structure, DNA-binding proteins, characteristics of DNA, structure of chromosomes, RNA structure and function. * Medical Genetics : The biochemical components of chromatin, organization into chromosomes in humans, technical aspects of cytogenetics, and the structure and classification of human metaphase chromosomes. * Medical Immunology * Medical Physiology : Structure and function relations, regulation of internal environments, positive and negative feedback, biological control systems, adaptation, and homeostasis. * Microanatomy : Fundamentals of light and electron microscopy including parts of a microscope and their function, types of light microscopes and their specialized uses, magnification vs. resolution, specimen preparation, stains and their specialized techniques (enzyme histochemistry, radioautography), transmission vs. scanning electron microscopy, ultrastructural identification of organelles and review of their function. * Neurosciences * Nutrition : Introduction to resources for learning nutrition. The nature of nutrition as a science, historical background, essentiality of nutrients, strategies for determining dietary requirements for populations. * Physician & Patient : Approach to women's health throughout basic and clinical sciences. Recognition of sex and gender differences in health and illness. Relevance of women's health knowledge in the clinical encounter. Critical analysis of the existing literature and applicability to diverse populations. Identification of women's health resources. SECOND YEAR COURSES : * Bioethics * Community and Preventive Medicine : Demographic changes in US society will be discussed with the impact on medical practice in the future and financial implications. Preventive medicine and its significance in health maintenance, disease management, cost-control and physician payment will be emphasized. * Health Care Policy and Financing * Introduction to Ambulatory Care : Review the immunology of inflammation. In particular, the role of neutrophils is addressed with a detailed discussion of adhesion, chemotaxis, recognition, phagocytosis, and intracellular destruction. * Introduction to Clinical Medicine : Topic of chest pain as a symptom is introduced. Differential diagnosis of cardiac and noncardiac causes of chest pain. Characteristics of ischemic cardiac pain in detail. Distinctions between stable angina, unstable angina, and acute myocardial infarction are explained. * Medical Microbiology : Perspective on the varied ways microorganisms cause disease, using vaccines to illustrate how knowledge of microbial pathogenesis is necessary for designing strategies of prevention and treatment. * Medical Pharmacology : The pharmacokinetics and the metabolism of drugs are discussed. This includes the principles of pharmacokinetics, absorption, bioavailability, distribution, biotransformation, and elimination/excretion. * Pathology & Laboratory Medicine : Who gets autopsied and where; hospital deaths versus forensic cases; the obtaining of consent; how to fill out a death certificate; contributions the autopsy has made to medicine. Also, students find out how they can make arrangements to get to see an autopsy. * Psychopathology PROGRAM FOR INTEGRATED LEARNING PROBLEM BASED CURRICULUM (PIL) Students who choose the Program for Integrated Learning (PIL), a problem-based curriculum, learn primarily in small groups which are supervised and facilitated by faculty. There are seven 10-week blocks over the first two years. Each block contains 10 case studies, detailing real patient issues relating to the topics of the block. The cases serve as the stimulus and context for students to search out the information they need to understand, diagnose, and treat clinical problems. Developing the information they need to learn is crucial to the PIL approach. Sharing information, concept mapping, evaluating and giving and receiving feedback are essential facets of the curriculum. Laboratories and lectures complement the case studies. FIRST YEAR BLOCKS : * Anatomy * Behavioral Science * Womens Health * Case resources SECOND YEAR BLOCKS : * Pathology * Pathophysiology * Pharmacology * Psychopathology * Patient as a Person * Microbiology * Behavioral Science THIRD YEAR The third year is devoted to required clinical clerkship rotations in medicine, family medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery. The clerkships all embody the following principles: * Common curricular objectives at all sites * Students spend 30% of their clinical time in expanded ambulatory care experiences * Each clerkship incorporates the concept of interdisciplinary teaching, with representatives of other departments or service areas * Each clerkship integrates the teaching of basic sciences into clinical material All third year clerkships take place in Drexel�s academic campuses. Students� assignments for the third year are based on the results of a lottery system. COURSES : * Family Medicine : Family Medicine is a required third-year clerkship. Students rotate in six-week cycles to gain experience in this ambulatory-based primary care rotation. The clinical sites for the clerkship consist of a network of outpatient family medicine practices, associated with family medicine residency programs. Each site that accepts students must meet standard criteria and participate in an orientation session reviewing the Drexel University College of Medicine Family Medicine clerkship curriculum. The faculty monitors sites for quality and for success in achieving the clerkship's goals. Students have the opportunity to focus on common ambulatory problems and the integration of the biophychosocial model in the delivery of primary care as well as exploring the role of the family physician. Assignments are integrated to assist students in applying knowledge within the clinical setting as well as informatics technology in addressing clinical problems. * Medicine : The Medicine Clerkship is the educational experience during which students are expected to gain the basic knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to care for adult patients with medical disorders. Traditionally, this has been hospital based and geared to the diagnosis and management of acutely ill inpatients. The striking changes in our new health care environment, marked by the ever-increasing proportion of care being delivered in the ambulatory setting and by the high demand for generalist physicians, has led to a renewed study of the medicine clerkship in all medical schools and the recognition that much change is necessary. The collaborative efforts of the Society of General Internal Medicine and the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine have provided a curricular model which places renewed emphasis on basic generalist competencies and on ambulatory as well as inpatient learning experiences. Drexel University College of Medicine has adopted this clerkship model with modifications. The clerkship will focus on those basic competencies of general internal medicine we believe should be mastered by third year medical students. One third of the clerkship will be devoted to the study of patients in the ambulatory setting. * Obstetrics and Gynecology : The third-year clinical clerkship in Obstetrics and Gynecology at Drexel University College of Medicine is a comprehensive six-week rotation which introduces and familiarizes the third year medical student with issues concerning womens reproductive health. Because of the broad-based nature of this field, the clerkship allows the medical student to be exposed to a variety of clinical areas, including ambulatory medicine, inpatient care, surgery, critical care medicine, preventive health and care of chronic illnesses. * Pediatrics : Pediatrics is a required third-year clerkship which is six weeks in length. There are seven sites at this time: Hahnemann University Hospital and St. Christopher's Hospital for Children (both hospitals considered one site); Allegheny General Hospital; Capital Health System; Lehigh Valley Hospital; Monmouth Medical Center, Atlantic Health System - Morristown Memorial Hospital and Saint Peter's University Hospital.. Students will experience inpatient pediatrics, ambulatory pediatrics, nursery, and community pediatrics. * Psychiatry * Surgery : The overall purpose of the Core Third-Year Clerkship in Surgery is to provide the students with appropriate educational opportunities and train them to become well-rounded professionals, whether their individual career choices involve the generalist or specialty disciplines. To prepare students to enter clinical practice as well-prepared practitioners, the clerkship encompasses topics important in the training of all physicians, and includes experiences that parallel clinical practice in the current environment of health care delivery. FOURTH YEAR The fourth-year curriculum is structured in the form of �pathways� � courses that give students a well-rounded educational experience with some focus on potential careers. Students can choose a discipline-specific or generalist pathway. All students have a pathway advisor. The pathway system is structured so that students take both required courses and electives. The required courses include a sub internship in internal medicine, a clerkship in neurology and an additional course specific to the pathway chosen. Students also choose six elective courses, in close consultation with their pathway advisor. Fourth-year students complete their required courses at Drexel�s academic campuses. However, pathway advisors usually advise their students to select electives outside the Drexel system. Additionally, opportunities exist for fourth-year electives at international sites. COURSES : * Subinternship in Medicine : The subinternship in Medicine provides a structured clinical experience in the broad field of internal medicine and those specialty areas necessary for the care of the medical patient. It is designed to be a well supervised educational experience that will serve to improve and build upon those cognitive and technical clinical skills already attained during the junior medicine clerkship. Through the subintern- ship, the student will have the proper environment in which to learn the clinical skills and attitudes essential to the practice of internal medicine and the delivery of the highest quality patient care. The subintern will fulfill clinical and academic responsibilities as an integral team member of an inpatient medical service. * Neurology. * Course pathway. * Electives.

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School name: Drexel University (College of Medicine)
Address: 2900 W. Queen Lane
Zip & city: PA 19129 Philadelphia
Phone: 215-991-8100
Web: http://www.drexelmed.edu

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