Curriculum

DMS's curriculum is as dynamic as the world of medicine itself. Each year, Dartmouth reviews all four years of the curriculum to keep pace with medicine's rapid advances and complexities, and to assure that you develop competencies in six broad areas: medical knowledge; clinical skills; interpersonal and communications skills; professionalism; personal assessment and improvement in the practice environment; and managing patient care in a complex health care system. When you leave Dartmouth, you will have the tools, the skills, and the attitudes necessary for a lifetime of learning—one of the realities and rewards of practicing medicine in the 21st century.

Year One introduces you to the basic and fundamental biomedical sciences and to the normal structure and function of the human organism. Starting week one, you also work with clinicians at our academic medical centers or in the community through the "On Doctoring" course to develop clinical skills while exploring firsthand the many issues that relate to the doctor-patient relationship. The faculty has also developed (and continues to develop) short electives based on student input, allowing you to explore subjects of interest outside the core curriculum.

Sample electives Years One and Two:

• Special Topics in Women's Health
• Advanced Cardiac Physiology
• Culture, Emotions, and Medicine
• Death and Dying
• Medical Ethics
• Health Care Reform
• Introduction to International Health
• Complementary Medicine
• Medical/Legal Issues of Reproduction
• Wilderness Medicine
• Medical Spanish
• Over a dozen research electives

DMS's "On Doctoring" course pairs first and second-year students with an experienced clinician who works in a local community. As one student remarks, "It's wonderful in the midst of first year when we're learning biochemistry and microbiology and physiology and all those things to have a chance to see patients; to talk to them. It makes all the basic sciences much more relevant."

Year Two. Along with continued clinical training through the "On Doctoring" course, the major component of Year Two is an interdisciplinary pathophysiology program—the Scientific Basis of Medicine—consisting of 14 separate but coordinated courses. System by system, you learn about diseases and their consequences, as well as the available drug treatments. For example, the pharmacology of antiseizure drugs is taught simultaneously with the SBM course about the nervous system. Practicing clinicians teach about 70 percent of the subject matter.

"We try to figure out what medical students need to become better physicians, and then
we do it."

Year Three includes required clerkships in the six major clinical disciplines: Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Family Medicine. These seven-week clerkships are completed at our two academic medical centers (the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Hospital in White River Junction, VT), regional teaching hospitals, regional office practices, and more distant medical centers and hospitals to provide our students with an exceptionally broad array of clinical clerkship experiences. DMS-affiliated clerkship sites include Indian Health Service medical centers in Alaska and Arizona, Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, and California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. The Year Three schedule was recently revised to allow students to take 4-6 weeks of clinical electives.

Year Four. In addition to two required four-week clerkships (Neurology, as well as Geriatrics and Ambulatory Medicine), you are required to take an advanced four-week subinternship in the field of your choice. During Year Four, you also complete 12 to 24 weeks of electives, choosing from a wealth of opportunities on campus, across the US, and around the world. You can also design your own elective with the support of a DMS faculty member. All students must also complete four short courses on advanced clinical subjects: "Health, Society, and the Physician," "Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics," "Advanced Cardiac Life Support," and "Advanced Medical Sciences." The capstone courses prepare students to excel during their residency programs and enhance their lifelong learning skills.