curriculum?

[Laconic]

hi guys
i was just comparing the curriculum of ross and sgu and it seems that sgu has more courses such as biostat/epidemiology, ethics, clinical skills(starting term1)..etc.
Does that mean that sgus curriculum is better

thanks

[VSR]

you'll get a huge dose of epi/biostats in 5th semester when you actually need to remember it for the boards. I dont know how much clinical skills you get at SGU as i dont go there, but you have PBL and some small clinical skills session (from what i've read) in the first two semesters now at ross. As you get into 3rd,4th and 5th semester you get more and more hands on clinical teaching.

if you got into both schools, i would recommend going to SGU so you dont put with all the admin type ** that goes with Ross. You cant go wrong with SGU, Ross, SABA, AUC in my mind.

[TennisMan]

The biostats and ethics is built into the behavioral science course during the 3rd semester at Ross. The clinical course is provided in semester 4,known as ICM or intro to clinical medicine. When you get to Miami for 5th semester, you get more clinical coursework. The whole 5th semester is called AICM or advanced intro to clinical medicine. Ross students also get a series of several biostats lectures in 5th semester during AICM. The biostats lectures in 5th semester is light years better than how it was taught on the island.

[Laconic]

thanks vsr and tennisman,
so i guess there is not significant curricular differences?

also, i noticed that term lengths for ross is shorter.. why is that if ross is covering the same kind of material.. and is it good or bad to have accelerated program.. do you make it to the match earlier? (sorry am kinda novice)..

[thethom]

I've always wondered why some schools (including US schools) offer ICM (or something similar) in the first year of medical school. I think that its entirely unwise, and that what a student actually will understand is greatly limited before they learn the pathologies and various disease presentations, and know what to look for. A surgeon I shadowed in college once said it best, unless I studied the anatomy before coming into the OR with him, everything would just look like a bunch of meat. What you don't know, you won't see... This can be applied to medicine as well as surgery. ICM and patient contact at the END of basic sciences is best in my opinion.

[TennisMan]

I think a lot of schools have some form of an ICM course during basic sciences to expose students to the doctor-patient interaction early on. A few years back, there was all this commotion in the academic medicine arena that newly graduated physicians were not equipped with desirable communication skills and hence many schools decided that providing some intro clinical course during basic sciences may help students build comfort early on working with patients. If this is working out, I am not sure because I have not read any academic medicine journal articles lately regarding this. Now as far as 1st and 2nd year early clinical encounters at Ross, I personally thought it was just not coordinated well. Back in 3rd semester, there were weekly patient interview interactions for behavioral sciences, which often did not have a facilitator present to guide students. I recall our facilitator was present for only 3 of the patient interviews for the whole semester. The rest of our interview sessions were learn how to interview the patient on our own. ICM in 4th had that one day a week play doctor session where we were supposed to learn a full head to toe exam, which was ok, but the lectures for the ICM department were so so. What is really bad is that once you get to 5th semester, it is sort of insinuated that everything that was taught in 4th semester ICM should be forgotten and you must learn the head to toe exam the way the AICM folks want you to learn it. There is definitely much room for improvement in how Ross coordinates their intro to clinical medicine courses on the island and in Miami. During 5th semester AICM, instead of building on the clinical skills learned in 4th, we were told to do many tasks drastically different than how we were taught on the island.