Im sure spiced can shed a lot of light on this. I have a good friend as a 2nd year there and I have been to lecture. OMS-I From 8-12 the students are in lecture with a lot of emphasis on incorperating clinical examples of the current study. As far as I know they do like Muscoloskeletal for X amount of weeks, with weekly quizzes (60 q's) on monday and at the end of the unit (system) they will have a major exam. Gross Anatomy is studied in the afternoons on some of the days of the week. On the lecture I attended, they explained diseases/symtoms in a biochemical way, then followed up with clinical examples/labwork/pharm etc..... Spicedmanna could follow up and correct where I am wrong, and elaborate on what I described as correct.
Actually, that's not a bad summary.
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KCUMB's curriculum is essentially systems based, with additional features. We go through different systems of the body and examine the clinical and basic science aspects of each in detail. It's fairly well integrated. In addition, we have IOCS (integrated osteopathic clinical skills), which includes the basics of H & P, clinical practice with simulators, community service (I'm not sure if this is officially part of the curriculum, but we provide routine physicals to children through Score 1 For Health), communication skills, diversity training, and OMM lab. We also get training in bioethics and biostatistics. Generally, each systems block is about 6 weeks long, with two "quizzes" (really tests) per unit (on Mondays), some practicals (OMM, anatomy, and/or pathology), and a final exam. The longest systems block we have, I believe is Cardiopulmonary, which goes from 9/24 to 11/02. As you might imagine, that block has a few more assessments.
First year starts with 6 weeks of FOM, or Foundations of Medicine. This block is designed basically to get everyone on the same page and introduce us to the study of medicine. My imagination is that the systems-blocks will have a similar meta-structure, except the block will be focused on the system we are studying. For FOM, they stuff in a lot of the introductory basic science material in a pretty small time frame. Although every attempt is made to integrate the material using themes (for example, "The Well Patient" and "The Patient at Risk for Genetic Disease"), it's still a bit tough to wade through all the basic Histology, Biochemistry, Medical Genetics, Bioethics, Biostatistics, Pathology, Microbiology, Embryology, EBM, Pharmacology, OMM, Communication, Physiology, Medical Business, etc. A lot of folks think FOM is the toughest block because of all the information. I can say this: my head is still spinning; we just had our first quiz this Monday. So far the classes run from 8 am to 12 pm, and we pretty much have back-to-back lectures with a variety of instructors. We generally have lunch at 12 pm. The afternoon schedule is more variable and is generally when we have labs, although we can have lectures then as well. On many days, my day basically ends at 5 pm, although, I sometimes finish early depending on group scheduling and scheduled independent study. We haven't started Gross Anatomy Lab yet. I believe that begins in the next systems block, MSK. Notes are generally prepared before each lecture and made available to the students. Most lectures are powerpoint presentations. Generally, the audio portions of the lectures are recorded and sync'ed up with their respective powerpoints. It isn't always lecture-style, however. Sometimes we have moderated discussions (sometimes in smaller groups) and my imagination is that we will be having presentations by patients throughout the year (we had one recently in FOM). We have minor essay assignments on occassion.
After FOM, we have MSK, Cardiopulm., GI, and Renal, followed by the final assessments and practicals. Although there are a lot of traditional lectures and labs, don't forget that there is also clinically-focused instruction and plenty of other non-traditional elements integrated into the schedule. It ends up being a pretty eclectic schedule, in my opinion.
We have a pretty large class, around 250 students. Thus, we are generally broken up into smaller groups of about 60 people (Group A, B, C, D) based on alphabetical order of last name for some elements. Sometimes these groups are coalesced (Groups A & B, and Groups C & D) and sometimes groups are sub-divided even further, sometimes down to a few people in a group for path sign-outs and clinically-oriented exercises, as examples. So far my favorite "class" has been pathology. Our path instructor does a great job of actually getting folks involved. He doesn't just sit there and lecture to you; he makes sure you are actively engaged. So far, many of the path activities have been pretty small and intimate groups with direct one-on-one interaction with a path instructor. We've been doing cool things like learning how to actually read X-rays and look at tissue slides. My experience, so far, is that the teaching style for path is very much a "see one, do one" type of learning integrated with a lot of Socratic method instruction (at least that's how our main instructor teaches). I feel like I'm learning real stuff and I know this will help me during rotations and residency. Much better than powerpoints. If this is a foreshadowing of things to come, I think I'm going to be well-trained in path.
I think it's a challenging curriculum, but I also think I'm going to be very strong as a result of it. Although I sometimes feel frazzled by the intensity, I know I'm setting myself up for success in rotations and for residency.
Let me know if you have further questions.
