Hey, I took the Pass Program with Dr. Francis. I thought it was a really good program, but it has quite a bit of problems with it.
Positives
Its a great program to set up a base off of. He focuses on physio a lot and basically is of the understanding that if you know your physio really well, you can make sense of the rest. So its really good for the physio that he teaches. It can also be good in that you get tutoring and drill sessions outside of class with other faculty. The tutoring benefits vary based on who your tutor is, but I was personally fond of the drill sessions. I actually still do drill sessions on my own with friends. They also go over other subjects in the course. Some are better than others.
Negatives
One of my biggest problems with the program was the number of lectures that Dr. Francis did not teach. He has other assistant professors teaching lectures here and there. He still teaches a majority of the lectures. Out of the 3 assistant professors, I only truly liked one of them and she had the heaviest accent. The other two were not as good and felt like more of a waste as my attention would keep going away. The other big problem with the program is the severe lack of pathology. Dr. Francis talks about path, but not nearly to the extent it deserves and it leads to you studying a lot of that on your own.
Overall
Overall, I would say that its a good program if you don't have a solid understanding of the material to start with. He focuses primarily on concepts and making connections between subjects, which is going to be great for clinicals. Most of the people that I've talked to that are already doing rotations loved the program because it really helped them impress the doctors. But you have to understand that most people that take this course study for a decent amount of time after having finished the course. I found it helpful to combine the pass program notes with my first aid. The program also helped me set up a good way of studying in which I'm starting to make some of those concept connections on my own as I read first aid.
In the end, I'm happy I took the course, but don't expect to be taught details that you will need to know for the step.
Hopefully that helped.
