Curriculum

The Major Clinical Year

The Major Clinical Year features clerkships that are paired in such a way as to promote interaction and continuity, optimizing clinical experiences, faculty development, and evaluation practices. For example, obstetrics and gynecology share a six week clerkship block, as do neurology and neurosurgery, which are also paired with five weeks of psychiatry.

Clerkships are broken up by four week-long intersessions, in which students come together for classroom-based, small-group teaching. This design allows students to take a step back from their clerkships and process their experiences, exploring aspects of medicine and health care that run across the different clerkships, such as understanding the patient-physician relationship and accessing and using medical literature.