Hmm, well how is the school in general? I know you guys have a condensed first and second year and start rotations early. What else is good or works at SOMA? How are the board scores?
In general, I think the school is extremely strong in a no-nonsense kind of way. It's the perfect learning environment for me, and apparently many others, and I think the early results really bear that out.
For starters, you are half correct that we do have a condensed first and second year. We don't start rotations any earlier than any other school, you really need to pass COMLEX1 for that to happen and we start our board exams at the end of 2nd year just like anyone else.
What we do, that often gets reported as condensing our first two years, is we have the longest OMS1 out there. We started in July last year, and finished in July this year. And we're already started for OMS2 now as well. We do the long first year to carve out 4-8 hours a week for what I like to call "Pre-rotations" during 2nd year.
Basically, during OMS2 you move to one of the school's affiliated community health centers for the rest of your training. There you finish the remaining didactics, prep for boards, and spend 4-8 hours each week seeing patients with a physician and getting a preview of what rotations are like. I prefer this approach because we all know that after board scores, the next most important aspect of a residency application is recommendation letters. How do you get those letters? By impressing your preceptors. How do you impress your preceptors? By performing well in rotations. I'd imagine that if you have been seeing patients all year during OMS2, you should (or at least have the opportunity to) be ahead of the curve in year 3. We're often told that our 3rd year students are commonly mistaken for interns, because that's how this school is geared, like I said, no nonsense. Also, clinic time is a valuable way to cement concepts for the boards. It's much easier to remember something if you've encountered it in real life, and while you can't expect to see nearly everything, you will see a lot during your 2nd year clinical time.
That brings me to my next point; the curriculum. I can't say enough good things about this curriculum. It's the clinical presentation curriculum (or CPC as I abbreviated in a previous post). Basically the gist is that there are 126 or so ways that a patient presents to a physician. It's up to the physician to decipher the clinical presentation and come up with a diagnosis and treatment plan. Patients don't walk into their FP and tell them they have trichomoniasis, they say they have a foul smelling vaginal discharge and itching. It's up to the physician to ask the correct sets of questions and conduct the correct physical examination and testing/imaging to arrive at the correct diagnosis.
The way our didactic education works is that we're taught in organ systems from day 1, rather than having the traditional first year of basic sciences and 2nd year of clinical sciences. So in any given course we will have what we call "schemes" which are schematics for how to handle a clinical presentation. We are taught how to navigate the schemes, which becomes quite instinctual after a short while. Along the way, we are given relevant lectures in both basic and clinical sciences. So in one week we'll have anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, microbiology, immunology, pathology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, genetics, molecular biology etc as they relate to each scheme. So everything is taught with a clear context, which really helps cement it home. It also brings everything into context for the boards, which are designed to test whether or not a student can tie years 1 and 2 together and apply them to clinical scenarios. I think that our curriculum makes board preparation very efficient. And our scores tend to bear that out. They haven't been super high, but they are rising steadily as each class attracts stronger and stronger students, and as the clinical presentation curriculum is polished and perfected.
In addition to all that, we have a full physical exam course during OMS1. In the first 12 months you learn every part of the physical exam, on your classmates, and on hired patient actors where appropriate (breast, male and female genital, and rectal). Where applicable, the exams we learn coincide with what we're learning in our systems courses.
We also have OSCE's which stands for "objective standardized clinical encounters" where the patient actors come in, present with a chief complaint, and we are then given a set amount of time to complete a history and relevant physical examination. You will not leave OMS1 unready to see patients in OMS2, and our physical exam class has a strong reputation locally (among the 3 other medical schools in the area) as being extremely well taught.
And of course we also have the traditional 4 hours of OMM per week that other schools have, which is also taught in sync with the systems courses as much as possible.
It sounds like a lot, and it is. We have a very grueling curriculum, and one you won't find at any other school at this point but it's also extremely rewarding. All this work creates students who excel in clinical situations, perform well on boards, and appear to be very competitive for traditionally difficult to obtain residency positions.
