Description of UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Since 1998, the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences has offered a medical curriculum that places the patient at the center of learning. This patient-centered learning approach was launched only after several years of work and study by the faculty and consultation with other schools that had initiated this method or a version of it. "We've integrated clinical medicine basically from day one," Allen said. "Students have exposure to patients and clinical medicine early on, so it makes the transition to the clinical (third and fourth) years easier ... It's not as scary for students to begin interacting with patients as it was under the former, more traditional curriculum." In the past, first- and second-year students typically had little or no contact with patients. In a curriculum heavy with lectures, they were busy memorizing volumes of basic science information usually for the sake of exams, without a clear understanding of how this information would be used or how to apply it to a patient case. "We weren't allowed to touch a patient until the third year of medical school," Dean H. David Wilson, M.D., recalls. Now, with two years of studying patients under their belts, third-year med students "are far more advanced" than they were in the past, Allen said. "They are more comfortable with doctor-patient interactions and further ahead in clinical skills, interviewing and clinical examination because they've had so much practice already. "They are more advanced in clinical-reasoning skills," he says. "They're taking medical knowledge and applying it to the clinical setting much more effectively than in the older curriculum."