UMMS

Curriculum

A Working Curriculum

Your Four Years
Curriculum Components

From the White Coat Ceremony through Residency Match Day, a student's journey is filled with new and challenging work. We will encourage you to be a lifelong learner and provide you with every opportunity to excel and become the best physician possible.

At Michigan, medical education begins and ends with patient care. While you will learn about cells, tissues, organ systems and disease through lectures, labs and textbooks, it all comes to life through patient interaction. Ever mindful of an increasingly diverse patient population, the curriculum is designed to give you frequent opportunities to relate with people from all walks of life.

We continuously draw from our outstanding faculty, and exceptional, diverse student body to enhance the educational experience. Much thought and creativity have gone into developing a curriculum that logically correlates all the disciplines in sequences that allow students to deeply understand a subject, reinforce it and retain it. You will learn the material in the same way you will use it later in your practice of medicine.

Through the M3 and M4 clinical years, students work very much as residents do. You will be part of the team, working side by side with the residents, attending physicians and the rest of the health care team. By the end of your fourth year, you will be a highly sought-after resident candidate, not only for your depth and breadth of knowledge, but for your compassion and insight into what it takes to make a doctor a great doctor.

Your Four Years

M1
As a first-year student, you will begin seeing patients within your first couple of weeks. Patient interaction though the Family Centered Experiences, longitudinal cases and clinical weeks will be woven through your pre-clinical coursework as a means to reinforce what you are learning in lectures and how to practically apply it.
View M1 sequence overview.

M2
The second-year curriculum continues to be interdisciplinary and organ-system based, covering the abnormal organ systems. You will continue to work on patient histories, physical exams and presentations with the supervision of a faculty member.
View M2 sequence overview.

M3
By the time you reach your third year, you will begin clerkship-based rotations in a number of departments throughout the University of Michigan Health System and will play a key role on the health care team. The clerkship rotations are designed specifically to introduce students to various disciplines and expand opportunities for career exploration.
View M3 sequence overview.

M4
In addition to electives and time off for residency interviews, the required fourth-year sub-internships allow you to further explore specialties of interest to you and take on your own patient caseload with nearly the same responsibilities as a resident. Residency directors from the top programs across the country have credited Michigan's training as the reason why our graduates transition better than most into the role of intern.
View M4 sequence overview.

Curriculum Components

Clinical Foundations in Medicine (CFM), a.k.a. Clinical Weeks
Beginning in M1, Clinical Week modules are scheduled in between the sequences to introduce students to basic clinical skills and focus on development of communication skills without distraction. The modules include clinical observations, hands-on physical examination skills, patient demonstrations, and topic-based small group discussions that include professionalism and the doctor/patient relationship.

Longitudinal Cases/Small Groups
Within most of the organ systems sequences in the first two years, a longitudinal patient case is introduced to bring content to life. Weekly small group discussions focus on a related ongoing case study and how related topics such as health insurance impact patient outcomes.

Each case includes comprehensive personal, cultural and medical information to help students understand how patients and families experience illness. Within the small groups, students team up to present what they have learned and then discuss it with the rest of the group. A faculty mentor serves as the small group leader, facilitating how students make connections between the cases and what was learned in the classroom.

Family Centered Experience (FCE)
The Family Centered Experience is a big part of the first two years. Through FCE you will get to know a family and be a firsthand witness, not only to the physical affects of disease, but also how it affects the lives, emotions, finances and relationships of patients and their families.

Pairs of first-year medical students are assigned to families recruited from the community, and they visit their family four to five times each year to interview them. Each patient/family visit is focused on a particular theme and is followed by a small group meeting where students share their experiences in the context of specific assignments related to that particular visit. Students often develop close, lasting relationships with their patients because of this intimate interaction.
Learn more about the Family Centered Experience.

Standardized Patient Instructors (SPIs)
Standardized Patient Instructor exercises are incorporated across all four years of the curriculum. SPI exercises essentially provide a live action case study. The instructors have been trained to exhibit specific conditions and help evaluate a student's ability to effectively interact with a patient based on specific criteria. Because SPIs are not actually sick, students can concentrate on learning how to work with patients rather than healing real patients.

Pass/Fail
For the first two years of study, all grades are pass/fail. Students can master material in an environment where they can freely share with their peers. We've taken away the pressure of competition for grades so the focus can be on learning and developing as a team player, which ultimately benefits patients.

Seminars in Medicine
Every Friday during the third and fourth years, students meet with an appointed faculty member to focus on a specific aspect of medicine. Often these conference sessions enhance patient-based learning and introduce issues related to the treatment options of a particular disease.

Flextime Quizzes
As one of the more popular features of the curriculum, weekly flextime quizzes reinforce what students are learning as they learn it while having the freedom to choose when the quiz happens. From Friday afternoon through Monday morning, you have access to the quizzes, which means how you plan to spend your weekend really will be up to you.

International Rotations
An international rotation promises a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Each year, about 30 fourth-year medical students choose to spend one of their elective months on an international clinical rotation. Generally, students set up their own rotations. For those students in need of logistical assistance, Global REACH can help identify potential opportunities. More than 400 Medical School faculty have international contacts and most have offered to assist medical students in setting up international clinical rotations.
Learn more about International Rotations.

Science in Clinics (a.k.a. Clinical Medicine Correlations)
As a one-month requirement in the fourth year of study, Science in Clinics teaches basic science content at an advanced level within a clinically relevant context to enhance problem-solving abilities. Students are expected to understand the mechanisms of disease processes and how they lead to develop standards for treatment of a disease. At the end of the month, students will prepare a report to present their findings, gaining invaluable insight into how biomedical literature is created.

As an option by special arrangement, a basic research elective course may be modified to fulfill the goals and conditions of a Science in Clinics course, with approval of the Science in Clinics Coordinator.