The 'Double Helix' Curriculum

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. The new Rochester curriculum is uniquely designed to train lifelong learners of medicine. Special emphasis is placed on skills acquisition and use.

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.

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.

Classroom Setting

Emphasis is on active student learning through the school-wide use of multidisciplinary PBL cases in all courses. Small group sessions consist of PBL, laboratories, conferences, seminars, and computer-assisted learning, which complement whole-class overview lectures.

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.

Electives

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