Medical Education, University of Rochester Medical Center

The Medical Education Program

Transforming the Learner…Through Excellence in Education

The Rochester Double 'Helix Curriculum'

Click here for the Double Helix Curriculum Map

The Double Helix Curriculum captures the integrated strands of basic science and clinical medicine as they are woven throughout the four-year curriculum. Each element of the curriculum strengthens Rochester's biopsychosocial tradition by fostering knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors of the physician/scientist/humanist, by combining cutting-edge, evidence-based medical science with the relationship-centered art that is medicine's distinctive trademark.

Preparation for a Lifetime of Learning

The new Rochester curriculum is uniquely designed to train lifelong learners of medicine. Special emphasis is placed on skills acquisition and use. Sensitivity to the world of the patient is encompassed in the biopsychosocial integration of the curriculum and the learning experience. By ensuring adequate and early electivity for students to enhance their special interests, the Double Helix Curriculum generates a knowledge base characterized by depth, breadth, rigor, and flexibility.

Integration Across All Four Years

Every course is interdisciplinary: basic sciences are integrated with one another and basic and clinical sciences are woven together as the strands of the Double Helix Curriculum throughout the four years. Unlike the early clinical exposure of any other school, the clinical skills training from day one leads not to shadowing experiences in clinics, but to the start of real clinical work as part of the health care team while still in the first year.

Every Course Has Clearly Defined Objectives

Every course has learning objectives, a plan for enabling students to meet those objectives and appropriate assessment instruments to ensure that students have met the objectives. Emphasis is on integrated exams and evaluation formats that assess preparation, participation, critical thinking skills, knowledge application to problem solving, and professionalism. We expect students to treat the educational enterprise with the same seriousness of purpose that we all treat patient care and re-search, and participation in course/clerkship assessment for continuous improvement of the curriculum is expected.

Mastering Medical Information

A unique feature of the Double Helix Curriculum is an introductory module at the beginning of year one where students learn "how" to meet the challenges of active and independent learning by becoming competent in data management, information technology, and critical evaluation of the medical literature. Students also are introduced to the essentials of epidemiology, biostatistics, evidence-based medicine, and clinical trial design.

The Classroom Setting

Emphasis is on active student learning through the school-wide use of multidisciplinary PBL cases in all courses. Interdepartmental multidisciplinary faculty teams direct major curricular blocks, which usually include three two-hour PBL tutorials per week, lectures, labs and conferences.

Small group sessions consist of PBL, laboratories, conferences, seminars, and computer-assisted learning, while adequate time for self-study is provided by keeping two afternoons per week free of curricular activities.

The Clinical Setting

Clinical exposure begins during the first week of medical school. Students complete their Introduction to Clinical Medicine in the fall of year one and then participate in the Ambulatory Care Clerkship beginning their first spring semester. This experience, unlike any other in the country, includes the ambulatory components of family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, women's health, psychiatry, and ambulatory surgery, and is completed by the end of the second year.

Year three inpatient clerkships focus on acute care experiences in Adult Medicine (internal medicine and surgery). Women's and Children's Health (pediatrics and ob/gyn), Mind/Brain/Behavior (neurology and psychiatry), and urgent/emergent care. Inpatient clerkships end with a return-to-basic science block that reexamines the science basic to medicine at a deeper, more sophisticated level of planned redundancy.

Fourth-year students can choose from a wide variety of clinical electives. They also participate in the Community Health Improvement Clerkship , the Process of Discovery course and a sub-internship. Following the residency "match" in March of the fourth year, students complete their training with a sophisticated series of integrated cases (Year IV Case Seminars) that emphasize basic science principles that underlie clinical practice, and a course called Successful Interning. This "nuts-and-bolts" course focuses on practical topics that students find invaluable in their preparation for internship and residency.

Electives

A wide variety of electives are available during all four years of the curriculum and include not only clinical electives but electives in Medical Humanities, International Medicine, Community Outreach, and Medical Humanities.

Affiliated Hospitals

One of the great strengths of the clinical education programs at Rochester is the high quality of its teaching hospitals. The principal site for clinical education are Strong Memorial Hospital and Highland Hospital at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Teaching also takes place at Rochester General Hospital, Park Ridge Hospital, and Monroe Community Hospital.

Academic Research Track

The Academic Research Track (ART) will provide selected students, strongly motivated to pursue an academic career in medicine that encompasses research, with a broad and deep exposure to basic, clinical, educational or translational research, involving both didactic and mentored research experiences through an enriched medical school curriculum.

The ART is a newly formed program offering medical students an opportunity to obtain research training and to pursue investigation on a topic of interest in greater depth. The class entering in 2005 will be the first to have the opportunity to take this course of study, which will be implemented over the following years. We anticipate that 10-20 students per year will enter the ART. This five-year curriculum will provide students with a strong background in medically-oriented research, with the goal of engendering a long-standing interest in academic medicine. The ART was created in response to critical shortages of academic physicians. As well, academic careers offer unparalleled intellectual challenges, career flexibility, and job satisfaction. We expect the ART will attract many of our best students, and will train the future leaders of our fields.

The first two years of the curriculum occur in parallel with the Double Helix curriculum. Introductory seminars for first year students, covering five areas of medical research, will occur within the Mastering Medical Information Course. Thereafter, seminars throughout the first two yearswill encompass various aspects of medical research, organized into modules. The modules are: Research as a Human Enterprise (Being Mentored and Being a Mentor), Formulating a Research Question (Research Models and Conceptualization), Measurements and Analysis in Medical Research, Data Analysis and Presentation, and Finding the Money (Funding Opportunities and Strategies). The final module in year 2 will be a practicum, presentations by students of their upcoming research projects. Additional seminars will be scheduled for in-depth presentations of research, linked to the material being covered in the Double Helix curriculum. All students will take the Ethics course required of all Graduate students, and will be certified for Human Subjects research.
During the summer after the first year, students in the ART will pursue a mentored research project in basic, clinical educational or translational ("bench to bedside" or "bedside to community") research. The program will provide a list of potential mentors, but students may also choose a mentor and topic independently. These projects will require approval from the ART Executive Committee.
After the second year, students will take a year out, tuition-free, to pursue in depth a research project with their mentor. If affiliated with a research program that offers degrees, this experience may qualify the student to be eligible for a Master's degree in that field.
In the final two years of the ART, students will pursue their clinical clerkships, and will finish up their research projects by writing a manuscript that will serve either as a submission for publication or will serve as the basis for a presentation at a meeting. Students will also return as speakers to ART students in the first two years, to report on their research. Additional meetings during these final years of training will consist of journal club or discussion, in workshop format, on topics such as planning an academic career, including continuing research career development during residencies.
Questions may be addressed to:
Robert A. Gross M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Neurology and of
Pharmacology and Physiology
Director, ART
Robert_Gross@urmc.rochester.edu
ART Executive committee:
Ronald M. Epstein M.D., Professor of Family Medicine and Psychiatry
Associate Dean for Educational Evaluation and Research
Director, Rochester Center to Improve Communication in Health Care

Kathy Hoeger M.D., Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology

Harriet Kitzman Ph.D., R.N., Professor of Nursing and Pediatricsand Loretta C. Ford Professor of Nursing

Jeffrey M. Lyness M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry and
Director, Program in Geriatrics and Neuropsychiatry
Director, Medical Student Education in Psychiatry
Craig Mullen M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and

Chief of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology

Kerry O’Banion M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy and Co-Director, M.D./Ph.D. Program

Thomas A. Pearson M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D.
Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Research

Albert D. Kaiser Professor and Chair, Community and Preventative Medicine

Sally Trafton J.D., Associate Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine
Associate Chair for Education, Department of Community and Preventive Medicine
Director, MPH Program
Program Coordinator:

Karen LaDue

Special Programs and Educational Opportunities for Medical Students

Joint Degree Programs

The M.D./Ph.D. Program

This program allows students interested in careers in medical science to undertake training in both clinical medicine and research. The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Rochester is funded by an MSTP grant from the National Institutes of Health, and provides an outstanding faculty and a wide diversity of research training opportunities found only in our nation's leading biomedical research and clinical training centers.

In June of 1999, the Arthur Kornberg Medical Research Building opened with state-of-the-art laboratory facilities and research programs. A new research building that includes space for basic and clinical research also opened in January 2002.

M.D./Master's Combined Degree Programs

These programs in the basic biomedical sciences are available to medical students by special arrangement.

M.D./M.P.H. Combined Degree Program

A combined M.D./Master of Public Health degree is available to medical students and can be completed in five years. The M.P.H. is offered in association with the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine.

M.D./M.B.A. Combined Degree Program

Rochester offers a combined M.D./M.B.A. degree program in Health Care Management in conjunction with our William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration. Matriculants in this program complete their first year of study at the Simon School, then spend 4 years in the School of Medicine and Dentistry and take additional electives for credit in both schools.

To be considered for acceptance into the M.D./M.B.A. program, check the appropriate box on Rochester's Supplemental Application. Applicants must take the MCAT and GMAT examinations and complete the Simon School's application.

Center for Advocacy, Community Health, Education and Diversity

A wide variety of student enrichment programs complement the formal medical school curriculum and are coordinated by the Center for Advocacy, Community Health, Education and Diversity. These experiences include:

Community outreach programs (educational tutoring, support, and volunteer activities)
International medicine experiences (40 percent of Rochester students participate)
Student research (summer, elective, and year-out fellowships)

Student Research

Summer and year-out research opportunities are available to medical students who wish to nurture their interests and abilities in academic medicine through experiences, outside the classroom. These experiences may be in clinical or basic science research.

Research fellowships that afford students a unique opportunity to broaden their experiences may be taken at any time after the first year, and may be used for preparation of a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine with Distinction in Research.

Adrienne Morgan, M.S.

"The enrichment programs offer students an opportunity to pursue and enhance personal and professional goals outside of the classroom.
The structure of the School of Medicine and Dentistry's enrichment programs is unique because we have dedicated staff and faculty who facilitate all aspects of these paraprofessional experiences for our students."

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Adrienne Morgan, M.S., is co-director of the Center for Advocacy, Community Health, Education and Diversity

Community Outreach Program

Unique opportunities to serve the community while studying medicine are available to students through Community Outreach. This program has placed over 1,000 students at inner city agencies serving the urban poor since 1987. Students volunteer with the most at-risk populations in our community. These experiences emphasize all dimensions of human services, not just health care - for instance, students tutor elementary school children in the inner city, help run women's support groups, and give health talks to pregnant teens.

International Medicine

International Medicine Photo The medical school offers numerous opportunities for students to become involved in Rochester's communities and the "global village."
Rochester's medical school has formal exchange agreements with schools in Taiwan, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, and Poland, as well as linkages and relationships with dozens of hospitals, clinics, and health care sites throughout the world - from Antigua to Zimbabwe. Approximately 40 percent of each class participate in international electives and summer experiences, mainly in developing countries

. Rochester offers international health awards, which support these trips abroad. Students are required to design and carry out a small research project abroad and to report on their experiences to fellow classmates and the medical community upon their return. Students return with a profound sense of the First World's ability to affect global issues in health, and they often consider incorporating an international component into their career.

Surgery Photo