The emerging popularity of family medicine and primary care among medical students with an attendant pressure for clinical relevance in pre-clinical coursework and early clinical exposure has raised questions in the minds of many academicians about the students' perceived value of basic sciences in such an educational environment. A comparison was made of attitudes toward the basic sciences between students in two, concurrent, pre-clinical medical school curricula at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. The conventional curriculum offers a teacher-centered, 2-year curriculum of basic sciences taught predominantly by basic scientists in a lecture format. The experimental curriculum entitled the Primary Care Curriculum (PCC), offers a student-centered, 2-year curriculum in which pertinent basic and clinical science learning is derive primarily from common, primary care, patient problems, discussed in small group tutorials. There are no formal lectures. Half the tutors are primary care clinicians, half basic scientists. Attitude scales were administered in two successive classes of students in both curricula at the beginning of the first and second terms of the first year. Increased cynicism toward the curriculum and its relevance to future practice was observed among conventional, but not among PCC students. This findings lends supports to the hypothesis that modification in educational methods in general and relevant, primary care experience in particular can favourably influence students' attitudes toward basic sciences.
A course in basic psychopathology is described in which problem-based learning is implemented in small groups in a traditional medical school curriculum. Simulated patients are utilized to provide the problem data and to allow for practice in medical interviewing. The problem-based portion of the course focuses on the explanation of various psychiatric disorders using an integration of four conceptual models: the medical/biological; the behavioural/learning; the sociocultural; and the psychodynamic. Reception of the course, based on student evaluations as well as teachers' enthusiasm and participation, has been positive for the 6 years the course has existed in this format, lending support to the conclusion that problem-based methods can be successfully integrated into a traditional lecture-based curriculum.
The study was conducted to examine the impact which personality types may have on the selection process of two preclinical medical school curricula. The two curricula run concurrently at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. One curriculum has a conventional-lecture format, and the other a new student-centered curriculum, which is designed to graduate students planning careers in rural primary-care. Results indicated that those students preferring the innovative curriculum were personality types unlikely to enter rural primary-care, whereas students preferring the conventional curriculum had personality profiles more consistent with those making rural primary-care career choices. Discussion deals with the implications of personality type and curriculum choice in terms of the curriculum goals and educational method.
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