Students entering the David Geffen School of Medicine this
August will be the first at UCLA taught under a new curriculum
““ one whose focus is on bodily systems and whose design
diverges sharply from the curriculum taught at the medical school
for over a decade.
The change in curriculum comes after an extensive review
jump-started by a 1996 faculty-student retreat that evaluated
existing curriculum, said Tomas Ganz, chairman of the Faculty
Executive Committee that approved the change.
“Many of us philosophically decided we would like to teach
things in a different way that would make more sense,” he
said.
Under the new curriculum, Ganz said the first two years of
medical school will be divided into units with a heavy focus on the
bodily systems.
A unit on the respiratory system would teach students about the
anatomy of the lungs and bronchi, the biochemistry and physiology
of the respiratory system and the infections in the lungs.
Under the old curriculum, units center on individual disciplines
like anatomy or biochemistry, so the respiratory system is
discussed several times, with each unit focusing on only one aspect
of it, said Margaret Stuber, co-chairwoman of the Medical Education
Committee that is overseeing the curriculum change.
“The major advantage of the new curriculum is that it
encourages students to integrate all of the information they are
learning, rather than learning one component at a time and having
to integrate it on their own,” she said.
Ganz added that the concept of integration will be reflected in
students’ exams ““ questions about the anatomy of the
heart or the biochemistry of how it contracts might be replaced by
ones asking what could be done to fix a patient’s heart
problem.
“When we encounter a patient with the illness we
don’t separately think of the anatomy, the biology, the
physiology,” he said. “It requires an integrated
approach, and that is the way we will teach the material for the
first time “¦ the way we actually use it.”
But it isn’t just out with the old and in with the new.
Next year’s medical school faculty will teach two curricula
simultaneously ““ the new curriculum to incoming students and
the old curriculum to students entering their second years.
Departments whose material will be taught to both first-years
and second-years may be “stretched,” said John Tormey,
Medical Education Committee co-chairman.
Some departments are coming up with “creative ways”
to address the transition, Stuber added.
“Since internal medicine will be teaching physical
examination to second-years at the same time as to the first-years,
some of the people from surgery are going to be helping with the
teaching,” she said.
Microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics professor
Lawrence Feldman said “double-teaching” next year
won’t impact quality of education.
“That affects me, not the students,” he said.
Allen Ho, who just completed his second year under the medical
school’s old curriculum, said though he believes the new
curriculum is a “step in the right direction,” the
existing curriculum has its benefits.
“The old curriculum is good because it’s safe,
because there’s so many classes that have gone through
it,” he said. “It’s tried and true.”
One difficulty in implementing the new curriculum, Ganz said,
will be assessing its advantages.
“The problem is that medical students are highly motivated
people regardless of how we teach them, so we can’t really
look at the exams and (say), “˜are they doing better
now?'” he said.
And though the change in curriculum is permanent, Ganz said
mid-year adjustments will be made as faculty and students see
fit.
Ganz added that UCLA is in no way leading the charge ““
schools including Harvard and UC San Francisco have made similar
shifts in their curricula.