Pre-Clerkship Interview on Anatomy and Physiology, Part II: Dr. Victor Chaban
Dr. Victor V. Chaban is a Professor of Medicine with dual appointments at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science( CDU) and University of California Los Angeles( UCLA). Dr. Chaban completed his post-doctoral training in Neuroscience at UCLA and graduate studies in Clinical Research at CDU.
His new book“ Calcium Signaling and Nervous System: Overview and Directions for Research” was published by Nova Science Publishers, New York in 2020. Professor Chaban is an established expert, who has contributed significantly to a better understanding of neuroplasticity and neuronal reorganization associated with chronic pain.
How will participation in this pre clerkship program benefit the students?
First of all, this a full medical curriculum, which requires students to have training before their clinical years, which we call clerkship. And traditionally, the good news some of us are old enough to remember the traditional curriculum. As I mentioned, I was involved in anatomy, I was involved in neurobiology, I was involved in physiology, which are separate courses before most of the University considered to have an integrated curriculum. As a Co-Chair of the Curriculum Committee with Dr. Glenda Lindsey, we had a very big discussion, are we going to go with the trend, or we will be unique in our education?
The traditional way is to have anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and move quickly, in a very short period of time- a couple months in year one and two, moving on to organ specific training. And Dean Prothrow-Stith was very supportive in a way that as neuroscientists we understand that there is nothing wrong to repeat information. Because the brain works in repetition, you get this information, you just elevate to another level. Exposure to a basic science curriculum is required by the LCME.
And we want to train our future doctors to think as a basic scientist, to some degree, not just looking for protocol, which is the standard of practice, the gold standard. But very important is to understand what happened to the patient, and to understand what is up to date treatment. Pre-clerkship, is not completely separated from clinical practice because the beauty of our curriculum is that we’ re going to introduce clinical case study from day one, in the first week of medical school called Gateway. So they have exposure to ultrasound, exposure to EMT training with emergency medicine. The benefit is obvious. You cannot be a CDU graduated medical doctor without knowledge of translational science.
And if you jump in right away to the clinic, you’ re not going to be up-to-date and you’ re not going to understand the complexity of the human body. The idea of step-by-step improvement is having more complex exposure to anatomy; then they go on to physiology, basic science, then to organ specific training on a different level. and along the way we talk to each other as directors of different courses, not to repeat too much and to introduce some clinical expertise through clinical cases separately related to anatomy, physiology and immunology, which will be repeated in the cardiovascular system, in the
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 19