Nutrition Education Program

UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MEDICAL SCHOOL CURRICULUM

Curriculum 2000 Background and Description: In 1995, in recognition of changing trends in the medical marketplace, including the continued shift toward ambulatory care, Dr. Morrison began a sweeping curriculum reform initiative referred to as Curriculum 2000. The planning process involved over 300 faculty members, students, University officials, and the leaders of external agencies such as the National Board of Medical Examiners, and the Association of American Medical Colleges and was initially launched for students matriculating in August 1997. The curriculum is intended to integrate content across disciplines and avoid the traditional approach of defining a scope and sequence of content for a specific course. The four-year curriculum consists of six modules as shown below and integrates themes across the curriculum. These themes include nutrition and prevention, epidemiology and population-based medicine, clinical therapeutics, managed care, women’s health, aging and neoplasm, and complementary and alternative medicine. The most recent addition to the required themes is the Doctoring Longitudinal Patient Experience, developed and implemented by Dr. Paul Lanken and will be described below as a component of Module 6. Dr. Lanken will serve on the Advisory Board.

Module 1: Core Principles, offered in the morning sessions of the first semester of the first year includes developmental and molecular biology; cell physiology, metabolism; host defenses and pharmacologic responses; and human body structure and function.

Module 2: Integrative Systems and Disease is offered in the morning sessions from January of Year 1 through to December of Year 2. Topics are organized by organ systems in the following standardized structure: normal development; normal processes; abnormal processes; therapeutics and disease management; epidemiology and evidence-based medicine; and prevention and nutrition. Anatomy is integrated across Modules 1 and 2.

Module 3: Technology and Practice of Medicine begins in September of the first year and continues through December of Year 2. It is offered in the afternoon, two days per week and includes Health Care Systems, Clinical Decision Making, Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Epidemiology and Population-Based Medicine, and Differential Diagnosis courses.

Module 4: Required Clinical Clerkships begin in January of Year 2 and continue through December of Year 3. The clerkships include inpatient and ambulatory experiences, emphasizing management of acute and chronic illness, clinical therapeutics, and health maintenance and prevention. Students participate in clinical activities, periodic basic science seminars, and learn to develop and utilize clinical pathways and guidelines.

Module 5: Electives, Selectives, and Scholarly Pursuit comprise the final 1.5 years of the curriculum. Students participate in advanced clinical clerkships, including sub-internships, advanced electives, and short-term and long-term research projects in preventive, community or public health medicine, or in health policy and planning. Seventeen 4-week blocks are scheduled in this Module.

Module 6: Professionalism and Humanism spans from September Year 1 - May Year 4, with the goal being to preserve and promote humanism, multi-culturalism, and idealism in the pursuit of medical education, the cultivation of medical collegiality, and the development of the doctor-patient relationship. small group format encourages discussion and helps build supportive relationships among group members. Courses include Ethics of Human Subjects Research, Introduction to Humanism and Professionalism, Doctoring I, Doctoring II, Culture Matters and Bioethics and Professionalism.

The goal of Doctoring I and II is to promote the values and behaviors of medical professionalism, including humanism and multi-culturalism. Learning occurs mostly in doctoring small groups. These groups function as "learning teams," in which students find a safe haven for exploring medical culture and its values and conflicts, their own processes of becoming physicians and many biopsychosocial aspects of the doctor-patient relationship. These small groups follow a uniform curriculum and use a variety of educational methods. The latter include team building exercises, case-based discussions, readings, listening to the narratives of patients and families of patients, role-playing, interviewing standardized patients, and discussing group members’ own clinical and personal experiences.

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