The learning environment at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM) is constructed based on the principles of adult learning, which promote student empowerment and clinical relevance.

The Curricula
Students enrolled in OU-COM study in one of two 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.

Years 1 and 2
The PCC curriculum provides opportunities for the integration of clinical, biomedical and social medicine fundamentals in the small group setting. Students work together to identify learning issues based on patient-centered cases designed by clinical and basic science faculty. Learning issues developed by the students serve as an outline to direct 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 objectives provide an outline to guide student learning.

“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-COM 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 Web site located at http://www.ohiocore.org/.