The Western Reserve2 Curriculum (WR2) creates a system of learning that integrates the fields of health and medicine into a single, program of study. The WR2 Curriculum has high expectations for learner-centered and self-directed learning, and seeks to train physician scholars who are prepared to treat disease, promote health and examine the social and behavioral context of illness. It interweaves four themes of research and scholarship, clinical mastery, leadership and civic professionalism to prepare students for the ongoing practice of evidence-based medicine in the rapidly changing healthcare environment of the 21st century.
Scholarship and clinical relevance are the benchmarks for learning, and clinical, biomedical and population-based sciences are integrated across the four years of the curriculum. The WR2 Curriculum creates a collaborative educational environment where learning is team and student-centered and where student education primarily occurs through: 1) facilitated, small-group student-centered discussions 2) large group interactive sessions such as Team Learning or didactic sessions that offer a framework or synthesis, 3) interactive anatomy sessions, 4) clinical skills training, and 5) patient-based activities.
Education throughout the four years is centered on:
- Fostering experiential and interactive learning in a clinical context;
- Stimulating educational spiraling by revisiting concepts in progressively more meaningful depth and increasingly sophisticated contexts;
- Promoting integration of the biomedical and population sciences with clinical experience;
- Transferring concepts and principles learned in one context to other contexts;
- Enhancing learning through deliberate practice, or providing learners with direct observation, feedback, and the opportunity to practice in both the clinical environment and in the Case School of Medicine’s Mt. Sinai Skills and Simulation Center.
The Western Reserve2 Curriculum has 10 guiding principles:
- The core concepts of health and disease prevention will be fully integrated into the curriculum.
- Medical education will be experiential and emphasize the skills for scholarship, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.
- Educational methods will be chosen that stimulate an active interchange of ideas among students and faculty.
- Students and faculty will be mutually respectful partners in learning.
- Students will be immersed in a graduate school educational environment characterized by flexibility and high expectations for independent study and self-directed learning.
- Learning will be fostered by weaving the scientific foundations of medicine and health with clinical experiences throughout the curriculum. These scientific foundations include basic science, clinical science, population-based science, and social and behavioral sciences.
- Every student will have an in-depth mentored experience in research and scholarship.
- Recognizing the obligations of physicians to society, the central themes of public health, civic professionalism and leadership will be longitudinally woven throughout the entire curriculum.
- The systems issues of patient safety, quality medical care, and health care delivery will be emphasized and integrated throughout the curriculum.
- Students will acquire a core set of competencies in the knowledge, mastery of clinical skills and attitudes that are pre-requisite to graduate medical education. These competencies will be defined, learned and assessed and serve as a mechanism of assessment of the school’s success.
Curricular Composition
The four years of the WR2 Curriculum are divided into four major components, each of which focuses on health as well as disease, and on the health of populations in addition to the health of individual patients.
- Foundations of Medicine and Health:
This component is made up of six integrated course blocks.
- Foundations of Clinical Medicine:
This segment of the clinical curriculum runs longitudinally through the Foundations of Medicine and Health, and has three components.
|
