I'm not a student (yet) but as per my understanding, OMM is separate and there are also a number of mini-courses which are more or less lecture based, and each PBL session is 2 hours long. I believe PBL meets once a week while you are taking anatomy and then 3 times per week after that.
This is more or less right. There is also a clinical exam course which has a lecture and lab component.
A typical, post-Anatomy, week looks something like this:
PBL 2hrs x 3 times/week = 6 hrs/ week
OMM 1 hr lecture + 2 hrs lab = 3 hrs/week
Clinical Exam 1 hr lecture + variable lab hours 0-2 = 1-3 hrs/week
Mini courses - Spirituality/ Ethics, Jurisprudence, Behavioral Science, Sexuality - very variable time requirement, some are online, some are lecture - anywhere from 0-8 hrs/week, I would say the average is probably 4-6 hours/ week.
Okay. So another question:
Are the profs pretty accessible, in the event that your group gets stumped in PBL?
You can always email or drop in on a professor if you have a specific question, but, in reality, it is usually not necessary.
The whole point of PBL is to get a little stumped in every session - the issues that come up and stump the group in every PBL session will become your learning issues. If an issue is relatively simple, the group may choose to look it up right then - if it is a larger topic, maybe it will be discussed at the next session after some additional study. Inevitably, the answers to the questions that come up will be found somewhere in the stack of basic science books which you will become very familiar with. Occasionally you may need to ask a professor about a particular lab value, but in my experience, it's pretty rare.
Every group also has a facilitator to help in pacing this questioning process - if the group breezes over an issue, the facilitator may ask some thought provoking questions to guide the group to delve deeper. Or, if the group becomes bogged down in minutiae, the facilitator may suggest tabling the issue and moving on with the case.
