they are initiating a curriculum change. It may begin this coming year. Some small changes have begun already. I think they want to make it a bit more system based (not completely).

i kind of hope there is a curriculum change... i think systems based learning is much more appropriate for retention. the current schedule reminds me of a pre-med style approach.

every system has its plus and minus

I was talking to the coordinator of the pathology course a few weeks ago and he told me that while they are designing an overhaul to a systemic approach, the next few years will just have fine tunings of the current system. Hammel said that his goal is to get the general pathology course taught in a block at the beginning of first year, so that as you go about learning everything else, you already know the mechanisms for cellular and local injury and will make other things easier to understand.

Having shifted to a systems approach to review for the USMLE, I think that I'm glad to have learned the disciplines independantly and gotten a rough overview of everything before trying to integrate them together because very few things are limited to just one organ system.
For example, something as simple as Vitamin D.. do you teach it with MSCT (musculoskeletal connective tissue) because of the bones? Or do you teach it with GI because it's a fat-soluble vitamin and requires both pancreatic and colonic viability? Or do you teach it with Renal because of Ca2+ and PO4- balancing? And whichever you decide to teach it with, how are you going to understand the effects and influence it has the other systems you know nothing about yet?

So you can see the flaws in a systemic approach. Not to mention that with all the gaps and overlaps, things get overlooked. I notice that in my review.. Cholesterol synthesis is more pertinent to the pathology of the cardiovascular system but it happens in the liver.. so during CV I was like, screw it, I'll do it later.. and now I'm doing the liver and I'm like, crap, I wish I did it earlier.

This just in....


my acceptance into Sackler for Fall of 06!!

Thanks everyone who listened to me whine over the course of 5 weeks!

Congrats!!!!

Congrats maji

Thanks both of ya!

I think my phone call did it, they probably went "This guy has waited a month, lets send him his letter already, we have tortured him enough".

Israel wooo.

Hello everybody, I haven't really talked on this thread in a while but just wanted to see how everyone was doing and who was actually going to be attending sackler in the Fall. I am in for the whole shabang, starting with orientation in mid august. Who else is attending the school/orientation? I am really excited

I will be attending too. Everyone is pretty much on the yahoo group, so you should join that if you haven't already.