Spring is Coming!

MS1s will have an end of year gateway exam this year for the first time. This will come from the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Custom Assessment Service. It will be Step 1-style questions chosen from an item bank designed to give students a chance to practice integrated clinical vignettes of the sort that they will see on Step 1 at the end of their second year. The exam will be Z scored to the mean and standard deviation of the prior unit exams with a pass line of 70. A committee of all course directors from the first year will check that the question content fits our curriculum.

New courses for the 2015-16 year will include the Molecules, Cells and Microbes course in the first two units of the MS1 year that will cover foundational aspects of cell biology, genetics, biochemistry, microbiology and immunology in the first 8 weeks; and a new course called Excellence in Care that will incorporate the ELSIM and PM portions of the Practice of Medicine course over the entire first year. Plans are under way to combine the Physiology and Microscopic Anatomy courses into a single course called Physiology and Histology.

We have been interviewing candidates for a new Case-Based Learning Course Director position that will begin to design a new course incorporating active learning in small groups studying clinical cases and clinical reasoning that will begin in 2016-17 for both the MS1 and MS2 years. This person will work with the Co-Directors of the Integrated Organ-Based Units that will start in the fall of 2016 to design a modern curriculum featuring active learning in small groups and early clinically relevant topics and cases.