MD Curriculum Overview

TheMDProgramis afour-yearcurriculum consisting of an initial two-year pre-clerkship portionfollowedbytwoyearsof clinical activities in hospitals and clinics. The curriculum is guided by the school’s educationalphilosophyand designedtohelp students achieve its graduation objectives. The first two years are divided into eight instructional units, six of which are organized around problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials. Within each of these segments of the curriculum, students can look forward to active and engaging PBL tutorials, supplemented by lectures, labs, standardized patients, and advanced simulation experiences. Throughout the first year, a Community Health course provides service-learning opportunities and information on valuable community resources. Across both the first and second year of the curriculum, a series of Clinical Skills labs and monthly experiences with Longitudinal Clinical Mentors in the community, provide students with regular exposure to actual patient care-related learning activities, and offer students the opportunity to practice and developtheirmedicalinterviewingand physicalexaminationskillsunderthedirect supervision of practicing physicians. Electives in a variety of disciplines are also available to students. Clubs, interest groups, and traditional events like the annual medical school lū‘au complement the preclerkship academic experience at JABSOM. Inthethirdyear,studentsparticipatein longitudinalclinical“clerkships” consisting of a half-year of outpatient clinics based in a specific community both on O`ahu and the neighbor islands and half-year of inpatient blocks that immerse learners in the core clinical disciplines. Students participate in the care of patients under the supervision of medical school faculty and resident physicians. The fourth year of medical school offers an opportunity for students to explore potential careers in medicine. In addition to required experiences in the fields of Emergency Medicine and Geriatrics & Palliative Care, students may spend up to 24 weeks in electives designed to explore various clinical and biomedical research disciplines. Throughout all four years of the medical school curriculum, students participate in learning communities, which are intentionally set groups of faculty and students which allow interaction between students from each of the four classes, provide a 4-year longitudinal relationship with their mentor, and enhance the learning experience through exploration of the many dimensions of health care management which maximize student learning and professional growth. The University of Hawai‘i John A. Burns School of Medicine is internationally known and respected for its outstanding educational programs. Combining an innovative problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum in the first two years with outstanding, community-based clinical training in the third- and fourth-years, JABSOM provides students with a highly-effective, thoughtfully-designed educational experience.