respiratory system, and so on.
How does developing this program add depth to the overall university academic curriculum?
We have the CDU Advantage. And research is the number one priority. Some students will choose to be a practitioner. Maybe in addition to clinical practice, they will practice academic medicine. Some of them will pursue this career for development of new treatments. And this approach offers research, global exposure, health disparity research; even in physiology.
I have a specific program objective to understand logically based differences between people who are underserved, and people who we consider privileged in this society; ethnic differences, or racial differences. Everything is imbedded from day one, a key advantage. And we will benefit sharing equipment because it’ s a good example. Cross talk, and cross teaching may happen within our program, and our school. This is my dream.
How is your pre-clerkship organized?
We have a schedule and Dr. Lindsey developed this with the DCI data collection instrument, which we sent to LCME. Typically, the morning lecture every day, Monday through Thursday. They have time for lunch, they have time for short discussion, and lab activities. The curriculum design of my classes. Anatomy and Physiology will be six weeks only. But it’ s an intensive training. Two weeks in August and four weeks in September dedicated to this class progression. We have to develop a training schedule for every class. It’ s not unique for anatomy or physiology. They have dedicated time: 8AM start; lecture maybe 90 minutes. Break, discussion in the afternoon, and of course realizing they need to have time for their life.
As for prerequisites, what knowledge base will our students in your specific pre-clerkship courses be expected to have acquired before they walk in the door? exposure to anatomy and physiology. Some students like majoring in math. Some are majoring in music and could be a very, very good doctor knowing how to use their communication skills.
Expectations never go away because it’ s very complex. It’ s not just 206 bones, it’ s 700 muscles. But I strongly believe that this training in the first month of medical education will give the fundamental basis to progress to higher level of anatomy. It’ s probably the closest and relevant to organ specific training, because biochemistry, immunology, histology, genetics, are also very important to understand everything. But anatomy is what they are looking for. Physiology, how does this system interact? That’ s why it’ s very clever to put this at the first level.
Do you think that the uniformity of the human body provides an advantage in your teaching?
Absolutely. I want to deliver a message to the world we are the same species we are the same race. Maybe it’ s too provocative to say but genetically, we are 99.998 % identical. Exactly 206 bones. No matter who you are, it’ s a size or some kind of other variation, but the message should be very strong from day one. There is like no difference between us. We are the same species and everything publicized too the contrary is incorrect.
How will your training work in anatomy and physiology correspond with the CDU Advantage?
We have to have something unique, something new. And the beauty of it in my mind is to develop a new curriculum. It’ s strange, because it’ s a lot of burden when people say,“ oh my gosh, we’ re going to create something from scratch.” But you think about this being something that nobody has done before. And see yourself in this position, to show to the rest of the country.
Physics, Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry specifically. That’ s required to get into medical school. Many schools have options such as normal anatomy, normal physiology or some other kind of exposure. But even if they don’ t have it, we will provide structure and education based on their first
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 20