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The role of Physiology in the development of a highly integrated clinically based curriculum at the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine
Author(s) -
Osborne David Lee,
Janssen Herbert Frederick,
Busselberg Dietrich
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.23.1_supplement.632.1
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , curriculum , medical education , context (archaeology) , medicine , medical school , physiology , psychology , pedagogy , surgery , paleontology , biology
The establishment of the new four year allopathic medical school in El Paso has provided the opportunity to develop an integrated organ based curriculum. This presentation describes the new curriculum and discusses the role of physiology. Here we focus on the first two years which are devoted to basic science delivery in the context of clinical presentations. Our El Paso curriculum is based on a model originally developed and proofed at The University of Calgary Medical School in Calgary Canada. There are 120 clinical presentations based on why a patient would seek medical attention. Each clinical presentation is illustrated by a scheme which represents the expert physicians approach to the patient's complaint. Following scheme presentation, faculty present the basic science needed to understand the decision tree presented in the scheme. The current faculty in El Paso consists of 15 PhD basic scientist representing the traditional disciplines and 4 MD clinical medical educators. Physiology represents 16 % of the contact time with a total of 185 hours of physiology including 60 hours of neurophysiology. According to the Chairs of Physiology report (2006), this emphasis on non‐neural physiology is 37% higher than the national average. While we teach 60 hours of neurophysiology compared to a national average of 9 hours. Physiology is playing a vital role in the overall development of this integrated curriculum.