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The learning environment at the Ohio University Heritage College of
Osteopathic Medicine (OU-HCOM) is constructed based on the
principles of adult learning, which promote student
empowerment and clinical relevance. Students are enrolled in
one of two curricular tracks – the
Patient-Centered
Continuum (PCC) curriculum or the
Clinical
Presentation Continuum (CPC) curriculum. Both curricula
view medical education as an organized building process that
extends from the first day of medical school through
residency training and beyond. Students in both curricula
begin interacting with real patients in the first weeks of
their medical education.
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”I always wanted to be
an orthopedic surgeon even before I went to medical school. I was just
really fascinated by musculoskeletal injuries, in sports, in athletic
types of things. It’s an expanding field, medicine has never
been better in terms of technology.”
Daryl Sybert, D.O. (‘86),
spinal surgeon, OrthoNeuro Institute, Columbus, Ohio. |
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Years 1 and 2
The
PCC curriculum
provides opportunities for the integration of clinical,
biomedical and social medicine fundamentals in the small
group setting, guided by clinical and basic science faculty.
Students work together to identify learning issues based on
patient-centered cases designed to layer medical learning
with patient interviewing skills and clinical reasoning.
Learning issues developed by the students serve as an
outline to guide faculty in providing additional guidance
through interactive problem sets and resource hours.
The CPC
curriculum is organized around important or common symptoms
that bring patients to see her/his physician. Within this
context, faculty-directed, structured learning activities
are provided to help students learn the clinical, biomedical
and social fundamentals of medicine relevant to the related
disease processes. Faculty written learning topics provide
an outline to guide student learning.
The chart on the next page
compares and contrasts the PCC and the CPC curricula.
“In either
curriculum that you choose,
you will have to do more research…and teaching each other
than most of us [were] exposed to in our undergraduate
careers.”
Student,
Class of 2005
Years 3
and 4
After two
years on the Athens campus, OU-HCOM students are assigned to
a hospital in our Centers for Osteopathic Research and
Education (CORE) system to complete training during their
third and fourth years in a clinical environment. This
assignment is accomplished by means of a lottery that is
conducted in the fall of the student’s second year. To learn
more about the CORE hospitals and graduate medical education
opportunities, visit the CORE website located at
http://www.ohiocore.org/.
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