The New HMS Curriculum

Throughout its history, Harvard Medical School has influenced the design of medical school education. From Harvard University President Charles Eliot’s 19th century reform—developing the concept of a medical school as we know it today—to the groundbreaking New Pathway curriculum of the 1980s, HMS has been in a continual process of growth and change. Now, HMS is ready to lead again by redesigning its curriculum to meet the needs of 21st century medicine by integrating clinical and basic science across the curriculum, developing new models for clinical education, and engaging students in an in-depth scholarly experience.

The curriculum will begin in mid-August with a new course, Introduction to the Profession, designed to introduce students to the profession, the practice of medicine, and the experiences that lie before them as they embark on the process of becoming physicians. Courses focused on the scientific basis of medical practice [basic, population, and behavioral sciences] and the patient-doctor relationship [professionalism, communication, physical diagnosis] span the first 3 and a half semesters of the curriculum. In April of Year II, students begin making the transition from classroom to the clinical realm. Individual clerkships in the major disciplines of medicine (medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, neurology, radiology) will be unified in a “Principal Clinical Experience,” which will provide opportunities for longitudinal experiences with patients and faculty mentors as well as an interdisciplinary curriculum that integrates the scientific and clinical aspects of important diseases.

Throughout the four years of medical school, students will have many opportunities to work one-on-one with faculty mentors. In this vein, a capstone experience for our students will be a several-year, faculty-mentored, in-depth scholarly experience culminating in a written work product. This exploration of a topic in-depth will allow students to participate with faculty in the excitement of discovery and scholarship. While still in the development phase, the new HMS curriculum will prepare graduates to function in an increasingly multicultural landscape undergoing radical scientific, social, economic, and technological transformation. HMS seeks to ready students for this new world by providing them with the ideal educational environment and carefully integrated global experience to foster their growth as clinicians, scholars, discoverers, and leaders.