Courses

It is hard to explain how classes work here. While we are officially on a quarterly schedule, we operate on a block schedule involving Essential Core Classes. The blocks for first year are Prologue, Organs (heart, lungs, kidneys), Metabolism and Nutrition (gastrointestinal, endocrinology, metabolism), and Brain/Mind/Behavior (neuroscience, neurology, psychiatry). We also have a "Foundations of Patient Care" class that runs through the entire first year. These blocks aren't individuated by quarter; Prologue runs for 8 weeks, then Organs spans the rest of fall quarter and goes into the beginning of winter quarter.

In these Essential Core Classes, we take an integrated, interdisciplinary course rather than separate biochemistry, cell biology, physiology classes. In Prologue, they are trying to level the playing field (as many people have been out of school for several years or were humanities majors). Subjects that are new for me are anatomy and radiology. These are integrated with basic physiology. I am also new to histology and pathology (staring at things through microscopes). These are further supplemented with lectures on cell biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and pharmacology. They also tell us we'll get a taste of fuzzy subjects like epidemiology and social/behavioral sciences.

In Foundations of Patient Care, we will learn how to interview patients and do the basics of the physical exam. They put a lot of emphasis on professionalism, developing a good relationship, and other warm fuzzy stuff. But we have already begun meeting patients and learning to use our equipment.

An odd byproduct of just taking this one integrated 19 unit course is that we don't have a regular schedule. Each day and each week is completely different (though there are patterns). This is because they organize classes by relevance of subject matter rather than convenience of habit. So we may have a physiology class of the pulmonary system and circulatory system. Then we may have an anatomy lab opening up the chest plate and studying the thoracic organs and great vessels. Then we may have a radiology of the chest lecture and a lab on epithelial cells. It makes a lot more sense in practice than it does in words.

We can also take electives. I'll blog specifically on all these classes in time.