Overview

The First 100 Weeks is an integrated curriculum with six vertical courses inclusive of both science and clinical content.  This integration merges normal (health), abnormal (disease) and intervention (pharmacology and therapeutics) across all body systems.  The First 100 Weeks also include two longitudinal courses, Structure and Patient, Physician and Society.  The Structure course integrates normal and abnormal anatomy, embryology, histopathology and imaging, and does so synchronously with the six vertical courses.  Similarly, Patient, Physician and Society is an integrated course with two components: Patient-Centered Care and Population Health.  There is ample time for personalized experiences, including opportunities during the first summer, for in depth pursuit of individual interests, such as research, community service work, or international health.

Science and clinical knowledge are interwoven during the First 100 Weeks through case-based sessions, entitled PEARLS (Patient-Centered Explorations in Active Reasoning, Learning and Synthesis). PEARLS sessions are intentionally designed to ensure that students developmentally acquire the skills to solve clinical problems by critically evaluating and applying basic and clinical scientific knowledge to socially contextualized patient care.

The Second 100 Weeks is also an integrated curriculum inclusive of both clinical and science content.  It is structured around a series of advanced clinical experiences, in both inpatient and ambulatory settings. These are followed by four required sub-internships in medicine, critical care, emergency medicine, and a fourth, selected discipline. The advanced clinical experiences of the Second 100 Weeks remain true to the pedagogy established in the First 100 Weeks, incorporating structured exercises that ensure a continual intertwining of science and clinical medicine so that students learn to successfully apply science in the context of patient care.