Degree and Requirements, page 2
School of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine
The USC School of Medicine awards the Doctor of Medicine to enrolled students who have satisfactorily completed the four-year curriculum of the school. This curriculum integrates instruction in all departments of the school: Department of Anesthesiology, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of Cell and Neurobiology, Department of Emergency Medicine, Department of Family Medicine, Department of Medical Education, Department of Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Department of Neurological Surgery, Department of Neurology, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Ophthalmology, Department of Orthopaedics, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Department of Pathology, Department of Pediatrics, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Department of Preventive Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, Department of Radiation Oncology, Department of Radiology, Department of Surgery/Division of Surgery and Department of Surgery/Division of Urology.
The sections that follow provide a year-by-year synopsis of the emphases and organization of this curriculum; for further information consult the current University of Southern California Bulletin: School of Medicine.
Year I (38 weeks)
The first year of medical school is approximately 38 weeks in length. First-year students begin the curriculum with a 16-week introductory course, Human Biology, followed by a 22-week sequence of courses grouped under the title Organ System Review. Concurrently with these courses, which represent the largest portion of the first-year curriculum, students also take Introduction to Clinical Medicine I, Family Medicine, Introduction to Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine.
Each week of the academic year is composed of approximately 32 hours of class and laboratory time and eight hours of unscheduled time. The class and laboratory time of each week is structured as follows: Human Biology/Organ System Review sequence (24-28 hours); Introduction to Clinical Medicine I (4-6 hours); Family Medicine, Introduction to Psychiatry and Preventive Medicine (two hours).
In Year I, the instructor's descriptive comments are an optional part of a satisfactory evaluation. At the close of a student's second year, the comments noted on evaluation forms during Years I and II are synthesized into a summary letter by the Associate Dean for Student Affairs.
Human Biology
This 16-week introductory course provides the student with the knowledge necessary for integrated basic and clinical science study of human organ systems. The basic science component of this course orients the student to the biochemical, functional and morphological concepts relating to the cells and major tissues of the mammalian organism. The course also includes instruction in human cardiovascular physiology.
Organ System Review
A sequence of courses presenting integrated basic and clinical science instruction on each of five major human organ systems: blood system, endocrine-reproduction system, gastrointestinal-liver system, neurobehavior system, renal-respiratory-skin system.
The integrated presentations of each of these courses focus on the normal structure, function, and clinical significance of the organ system under discussion. The basic science component of the courses includes instruction in anatomy and cell biology, biochemistry, physiology, introductory psychiatry, and nutrition. Presentations in the clinical sciences demonstrate the application of basic science to disease.
Introduction to Clinical Medicine I
This course expresses the strongly patient-centered orientation of the medical school curriculum. The student is introduced to patients and is involved in patient care activities from the first day of the course. The course introduces students to the principles of patient care and management and examines what it means to be a physician and how one becomes a physician.
A group of five or six students spends from four to eight hours each week with an instructor from the clinical faculty who remains with the group for the entire year. As the group deals with basic medical themes (death, pain and helplessness) and issues (patient responsibility, learning to live with ambiguity and uncertainty), instructors help students to cope with their own feelings. This format opens the door for student-faculty interaction and improvement of student-faculty communication.
The major content areas of the course include communication in the setting of illness, the unified concept of health and disease (the biopsychosocial model), basic clinical skills and the correlation of basic science with clinical medicine.
Throughout the course, instructors encourage students to discard the passivity of the lecture hall and to take advantage of the learning experiences provided by their roles as helping and therapeutic persons. Students develop their ability to communicate with patients in the setting of illness and are guided by patient concerns to enhance their own growing knowledge, skills, abilities and responsibilities. Students are expected to acquire skills and habits of self-education and self-instruction which will prepare them for lifelong learning.
The unified concept of health and disease presented in this course enables the student to comprehend the human organism in all its complexity. Using their clinical experiences as a teaching model, students are taught to consider the patient as an integrated whole and to view the patient's illness or disease as more than simply a disruption of physiologic processes or a collection of physical findings.
This course integrates instruction in a variety of basic clinical skills with other components of instruction often presented as separate courses. These include history taking and physical diagnosis, the doctor-patient relationship, growth and development, introductory geriatrics and alcoholism. In the course of clinical instruction, the student is offered opportunities to explore a variety of medical settings, role models and career possibilities.
In addition, the course is designed to help students learn and apply basic science knowledge in the clinical setting. By encouraging a thorough understanding of the direct applications of basic science research to modern clinical medicine, instructors motivate the student to learn, use and retain more of the content and concepts presented in the basic science portions of the curriculum.
The course is administered by the Department of Family Medicine and uses faculty members from the Department of Family Medicine, in addition to clinical faculty from the community. The course continues through the second year of the medical school curriculum.
Family Medicine
The Family Medicine lecture series introduces Year I students to the specialty of family practice and to primary care. The content of the Family Medicine course is closely coordinated with the Introduction to Clinical Medicine course. Family and individual life cycles are explored. Students meet in small groups with individual patients with more specific problems; geriatric patients discuss their aging, runaway adolescents discuss drug and sexual concerns, patients with AIDS discuss their disease and their encounters with physicians. This course also introduces students to ethics and medical legal issues and to the organization and financing of the U.S. health care system.
Introduction to Psychiatry
Recognizing that a large percentage of patients with physical complaints have an underlying emotional component to their illness, this course introduces students to the biopsychosocial approach to medicine. Students receive an overview of normal psychosocial development through the life cycle, as well as an introduction to behavioral and psychodynamic developmental theory. This theoretical framework is then applied to clinical situations such as dealing with stress, loss and grief, death and dying, and the physician-patient relationship. The student also receives an introduction to the principles of clinical psychiatric evaluation, the mental status examination and the biochemistry of behavior.
Preventive Medicine
This course introduces students to problems relating to public health and disease prevention. Part One focuses on principles of epidemiology and biostatistics, providing students with basic skills required to understand and critically evaluate the medical research literature. Part Two focuses on potentially preventable health hazards, for example, smoking and other substance abuse, accidents and violence, physical inactivity, high fat diets and air pollution. For each such hazard, students learn the extent of the problem, the quality of the evidence, who is at greatest risk and obstacles to prevention. Part Two also includes an introduction to occupational medicine.
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Produced by the USC Division of Student Affairs, Office of University Publications, May 1, 1995
David Henriquez
univpub@stuaff.usc.edu