Office of Curriculum

The Office of Curriculum, a component of Undergraduate Medical Education in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, is responsible for supporting educational activities and scholarship through the following:

Collaboration with the medical school community to plan, implement, and revise the curriculum;
Provide the medical school community with educational development opportunities;
Through collection of valid, reliable and useful data on the teaching and learning process;
Through supporting scholarship in educational research, clinical teaching, assessment, and curricular design;
Provide assistance in seeking grant opportunities for innovative initiatives in medical education.

The overarching objective for the Office of Curriculum is to provide support for teaching and learning at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. The focus and cause of the office is as follows:

To promote the successful education of medical students and faculty through steadfast support of the curriculum;
The raise the standards of performance within the Office and for those we serve inspired by our belief in the value and importance of what we do;
To be visionaries in re-shaping the model or process by which we were accustomed to doing business (to “shift the paradigm”), through awareness, innovation, and leadership;
To develop constructive solutions to internal and external team needs in a timely manner with continual focus on quality;
To foster an open, supportive, and creative team atmosphere motivated by camaraderie, respect, recognition, and a mutually gratifying environment.

Double Helix Curriculum

Building on the University of Rochester’s tradition of an interdisciplinary, biopsychosocial approach to medicine, and guided by a strong educational philosophy and committed medical school leadership, the faculty and students in Rochester have created the Double Helix Curriculum. What has emerged from this “creation” is an approach to medical education designed to produce lifelong learners and practitioners of evidence-based, biopsychosocial medicine.

The Double Helix Curriculum grew out of the strong tradition of biopsychosocial medicine that has been a hallmark of the education of medical students at the University of Rochester since the 1940’s, and out of the desire of the faculty to respond to the demands of rapidly evolving biomedical knowledge and the need for students to develop the skills of life-long learning. A Task Force composed of University of Rochester faculty, department chairs, residents and medical students issued a report, late in the last decade, calling for a revised curriculum with complete integration of the basic and clinical sciences, for enhanced teaching of the scientific principles of medical research and practice, social aspects of health and illness, and information management skills. This report laid out the principles that would be used to develop the new Double Helix Curriculum.

The Double Helix Curriculum attempts to take to a new level the application of adult learning principles, the concept of problem-based learning, and possibilities for integration across disciplines and between the basic and clinical sciences. In addition to weaving the basic science and clinical “strands” across all four years of undergraduate medical education, there is further integration across related disciplines within each course in the basic science strand and the core clinical clerkships.

The Double Helix Curriculum takes the application of adult learning principles to a higher-level emphasizing problem-based learning and integrating instruction across disciplines and between the basic and clinical sciences. Furthering this integration, there are six named “Themes" throughout the curriculum. These important topics each have specified learning objectives in courses throughout the Double Helix Curriculum, and as with traditional courses and clerkships, there are faculty directors for each of the six themes. These themes are:

Aging
Diversity
Ethics and Law
Prevention and Nutrition
Health Systems
Self-Awareness

Educational Assessment

The University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry has a history of valuing student feedback and a record of commitment to improving the educational environment. Students’ views on the educational process provide much of the data used to assess courses and faculty. Thus, it is critical to our effort to improve the quality of assessment data that all students take this responsibility seriously and participate in this process.

All feedback collected by the Office of Curriculum remains confidential, unless indicated otherwise. Any feedback provided by a medical student will not become part of their education record. Course and Faculty Assessment data is only provided to course directors and department chairs after grades have been registered.

The School of Medicine utilizes a web-based assessment program called E*Value, which is operated and managed within the Office of Curriculum. The E*Value program is utilized for conducting course, clerkship, faculty, and student evaluation and assessment.

On-line surveys, through the E*Value program enables the Office of Curriculum to collect both quantitative and qualitative data on courses, clerkships, faculty, and students. School of Medicine policy requires ALL students to complete course, clerkship, and faculty evaluations.

Faculty Assessment

Students are our best source on information regarding faculty assessment. The Office of Curriculum uses faculty assessment data to identify learning needs of faculty that can be addressed through workshops and mentoring. In addition, student feedback on faculty is also used by promotions committees to assess the teaching contributions of faculty seeking promotion.

Curriculum Assessment

The University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry utilizes a multi-modal assessment, called the Comprehensive Assessment, to evaluate professional competence of medical students, during their second and third years of medical school, through assessment of the following:

The integration of basic and clinical sciences which form the basis for clinical reasoning;
The practice of evidence-based medicine;
Team work;
The practice of self-reflection;
Actual day-to-day practice.

The modalities utilized in the Comprehensive Assessment include standardized patient cases, team exercise utilizing a human patient simulator, peer- and self- assessments of Professionalism, computer-based exercises for evaluating basic science knowledge, self-assessment of videotaped standardized patient cases, evidence-based medicine exercises, and exercises to stimulate and elicit clinical reasoning.

Each student receives an individual report detailing his/her scores for each of the assessment areas, along with class means for the same areas. This report is combined with a self-reflection exercise to enable each student to develop an individualized learning plan, which is discussed/reviewed in concert with the students’ Advisory Dean.

In addition, at the end of the Comprehensive Assessment, students complete an on-line survey evaluation and focus groups are held, for soliciting student feedback on their experiences. This feedback, from the on-line evaluation and focus group, is reviewed by the Comprehensive Assessment design team in order to continually evaluate the curriculum and consider revisions to specific course content.

Standardized Patient Program

The overarching goal of the Standardized Patient Program is to expand upon the education of our medical students. The program provides realistic patient encounters for training and evaluating medical students. Standardized patients are carefully trained to simulate significant medical conditions or routine patient concerns.

They are used to help in developing medical student’s communication and examination skills and are skillfully trained to provide effective verbal and written feedback to our medical students.

Office of Curriculum Staff

John R. McCarthy
Administrative Director of Undergraduate Medical Education & Office of Curriculum

Mary Jane Dyer
Senior Information Analyst (Coordinator of E*Value program)

Calvin D. Eaton
Education Projects Coordinator, Office of Curriculum/Standardized Patient Program

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