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Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine

MD Program

Our MD program provides students with the tools and training to be successful physicians and improve health in underserved populations by taking a comprehensive, community- and team-based approach to patient care. Students will not simply learn how to diagnose and treat disease, but how to prevent it. It’s medicine with a mission: Improved health and healthy communities.

Doctor with notebook

MD Curriculum Highlights

  • Students spend one half-day weekly in a primary care clinical setting throughout the entire curriculum.
  • A focus on socioeconomic, environmental and other societal factors to improve patient outcomes.
  • Enhanced learning via a hybrid clinical clerkship model that exposes students to various fields of medicine, simultaneously, in hospital and outpatient settings.
  • Students work in interprofessional teams consisting of nursing, social work and medical students, as well as community health workers and physician faculty. These teams make regular visits to households facing significant challenges to address health improvement needs.
  • Team-based, interactive classroom instruction to keep students engaged.

Why the Primary Care Focus?

Primary care physicians are often the first point of patient contact, provide comprehensive care and develop long-term patient relationships, making them a key point-of-influence in patients’ lives. Yet, in Texas, we face a critical shortage of primary care doctors, especially in urban and rural communities. To improve health for underserved Houston and Texas residents, our program aims to produce doctors who will choose a career in primary care. 

Curriculum

Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine’s unique and innovative curriculum will prepare students to practice high-quality, high-value patient-centered medicine in a rapidly changing and complex health system. We place a major emphasis on primary care in underserved populations, social determinants of health, community and population health, and behavioral health to improve health care disparities in urban and rural areas.

Throughout the four-year curriculum, students will be immersed in a highly integrated approach to the teaching of biomedical, clinical, behavioral and social, health system and population health sciences, complemented with robust experiential learning.

Download the Four-Year Curriculum

Download the Current Course Calendar

The Fertitta Family College of Medicine pre-clerkship is based on four pillars of foundational science, and clinical knowledge and experience: Biomedical Sciences; Physicians, Patients, and Populations; Longitudinal Primary Care; and Clinical Focus Sessions.

Biomedical Sciences

Biomedical Sciences courses provide foundational medical science knowledge, essential to practicing medicine. The courses are taught in an integrated format and cover the following disciplines: anatomy, embryology, histology, physiology, pathophysiology, and the underlying symptoms, diagnoses, causes and treatments of common to complex conditions and diseases.

  • Clinical Anatomy and Human Development (9 weeks)
    Course focus: Gross anatomy, basics of histology, embryology and human development
  • Scientific Foundations of Medicine (9 weeks)
    Course focus: Molecular and cell biology, human genetics, key biochemical and metabolic pathways, and introduction to pharmacology and immunology
  • Integrated Organ-System Courses (9 courses: 3-9 weeks per course)
    Course focus: Gross anatomy, basics of histology, embryology and human development
    1. Integumentary System
    2. Hematologic and Lymphatic Systems
    3. Nervous System
    4. Musculoskeletal System
    5. Gastrointestinal System and Nutrition
    6. Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems
    7. Renal and Urinary Systems
    8. Reproductive and Endocrine Systems
    9. Behavioral Medicine

Physicians, Patients and Populations

(4 hours per week)
Throughout the pre-clerkship phase, the Physicians, Patients and Populations (PPP) courses develop physician-patient knowledge and competencies related to clinical skills. PPP topics include communication, professionalism, medical ethics, social determinants, health disparities, evidence-based medicine, clinical reasoning and decision-making, population health, health informatics, quality improvement, patient safety, scientific methodology, health systems and policy.

A student scholarly project will be one of the requirements, the results of which will be presented at a Fertitta Family College of Medicine Research Day.

Longitudinal Primary Care

The Longitudinal Primary Care (LPC) course runs for the first 18 months (pre-clerkship phase) and resumes in the Advanced Clerkships and Electives (ACE) phase of the MD program.

Students are placed in an ambulatory clinical setting to practice history-taking, physical examination, communication skills and patient management on patients — under the supervision of attending primary care physicians. Students will learn to function as a member of a primary care team, providing continuity of care to patients.

Household-centered Care

As part of an interprofessional team, students will make visits to a household facing complex health challenges to learn about the social determinants of health (SDOH), how to identify appropriate support services and make referrals. The interprofessional team will consist of physician faculty, community health workers and professional students from other UH colleges, such as social work and nursing. During household-centered care, students will design and participate in community-oriented, quality improvement projects designed to address SDOH at the community level.

Clinical Focus Sessions

Interspersed throughout the pre-clerkship are two one-week Clinical Focus Sessions. Each session is dedicated to a different interdisciplinary topic related to the College of Medicine’s mission and today’s societal medical challenges. The sessions integrate biomedical science concepts with important clinical and population-oriented aspects of health and health care.

  • Clinical Focus Session 1: Our Community, Our Mission
    Introduces students to the neighboring historic Third Ward community of Houston, Texas and the social determinants of health that impact its residents.
  • Clinical Focus Session 2: Closing the Quality Gap
    Explores the health of populations, health equity, health disparities and models for quality improvement in health care. Through project-based learning, students will integrate biomedical, clinical, health systems and behavioral sciences.

Advancement to Phase 2

Advancement to the Phase 2: Core Clerkship includes completion of the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) Comprehensive Basic Science Examination and the Transitions to Clerkship course.

  • NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Examination
    Two weeks will be dedicated to CBSE review and testing to assess comprehension of pre-clerkship knowledge and content (no grade will be recorded on the student transcript).
  • Transition to Clerkships (TTC) Course
    The TTC course reinforces both the oral presentation and clinical skills needed in hands-on care of patients throughout the remainder of the curriculum. This course will include Advanced Cardiac Life Support (students are expected to have Basic Life Support training complete upon matriculation) as well as a review of common clinical procedures, ECG, common x-ray interpretation, history-taking and note writing.

The Fertitta Family College of Medicine core clerkship provides patient encounters from the six core clinical disciplines — surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, family medicine and psychiatry — through the Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship and continuation of the Longitudinal Primary Care and Household-centered Care.

Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship

Throughout the core clerkship, Fertitta Family College of Medicine students will participate in the Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship (LIC), which is based on a hybrid-rotation model that exposes students to various fields of medicine, simultaneously, for enhanced learning and retention of knowledge. In this model, learning occurs within concentrated experiences in four hospital-based inpatient settings of internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology. In addition, students will learn across longitudinal, primarily ambulatory, experiences to allow continuity of patient contact and care, assessment and supervision, and clinical and cultural engagement.

LIC experiences include:

  • Four inpatient immersions (4 weeks each)
    Surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics and obstetrics-gynecology
  • Inpatient psychiatry immersion (2 weeks)
  • Longitudinal ambulatory experience (10 weeks per P.O.P. / F.I.S.)
    Will include encounters in surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, family medicine and psychiatry
  • Additional weekly educational sessions (8 hours per week)
    Sessions will include case-based conferences to reaffirm the fundamental principles of evaluation and management of common clinical problems, patient simulations and core biomedical content.

View Clerkship Faculty and Resident Resource Manual

Household-centered Care

Students will continue their interprofessional Household-centered Care activities during the LIC.

Advancement to Phase 3

Advancement to the Advanced Clerkship Curriculum includes successful completion of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 examination.

  • USMLE Step 1 Examination
    Students will have four weeks, before beginning Phase 3, to prepare for and take the USMLE Step 1 exam. (If needed, up to eight weeks will be allowed). During this time, students will also take a Comprehensive Basic Sciences Exam to assess their readiness for USMLE Step 1.

The advanced clerkship allows students to pursue individual interests and includes advanced rotations, elective experiences and continuation of Longitudinal Primary Care. During the advanced clerkship, students will be allowed to spend up to eight weeks interviewing for residency positions.

View Advanced Clerkship and Electives Student Resource Manual

Required Advanced Rotations

  • Intensive Care Unit (4-week rotation)
    Students may choose medical, surgical, pediatric or newborn ICU
  • Sub-internship (4-week rotation)
    Students may choose medicine, surgery, pediatrics, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry or family medicine
  • Emergency Medicine (4-week rotation)
  • Rural Health (4-week rotation)

Elective Experiences

Students will complete a minimum of 24 weeks of electives in clinical care, research and educational activities. They will work with their advisors to determine their electives. Students will have the option, and be encouraged, to spend up to 12 weeks of their elective time in the development of a scholarly concentration, and completion of a scholarly project. Scholarly concentrations can be in the field of primary care, community health, population health, global health, health informatics, health care administration, quality improvement, patient safety, health policy or biomedical ethics. Scholarly projects can focus on original research, systematic review of the medical literature, quality improvement initiative, community engagement and partnership project to improve community health.

Longitudinal Primary Care

During Longitudinal Primary Care Course, Advanced Clerkship and Electives (ACE) phase students use a structured approach to improve diagnostic reasoning, integrate basic science and clinical concepts, and critical judgement skills through the use of iHuman cases.

 

Advancement to Graduation

Completion of the Fertitta Family College of Medicine MD program includes successful completion of the USMLE Step 2CK (Clinical Knowledge) examination and the Transition to Residency course.

  • USMLE Step 2 CK examination
    Students are required to pass the USMLE Step 2 CK prior to graduation.
  • Transition to Residency (TTR) course
    The TTR course provides intensive review and learning activities to ensure that each student has completed the medical education program competencies and objectives and possesses the knowledge, skills, behaviors, and attitudes necessary to successfully perform as a first-year resident in their chosen specialty.

Medical Education Program Objectives

Patient Care & Procedural Skills

Demonstrates compassionate, effective, holistic, evidence-informed, equitable, and patient centered care.

PCPS1. Identifies and integrates patient and caregiver context, needs, values/preferences, experiences and structural factors into patient care.
PCPS2. Gathers relevant patient histories from multiple data sources, as necessary.
PCPS3. Performs relevant physical examinations using appropriate techniques and tools.
PCPS4. Identifies patients in need of urgent or emergent care, seeks assistance, and recommends initial evaluation and management
PCPS5. Creates and prioritizes differential diagnoses.
PCPS6. Proposes hypothesis-driven diagnostic testing and interprets results.
PCPS7. Formulates therapeutic management plans for commonly encountered clinical conditions.
PCPS8. Uses patient-centered language to describe common diagnostic and therapeutic interventions and plans.
PCPS9. Demonstrates basic procedural techniques appropriate to level of training.
PCPS10. Incorporates health promotion and disease prevention into patient care plans.

Medical Knowledge

Applies and integrates foundational knowledge to improve health care for patients and populations.

MK1. Demonstrates knowledge of basic, clinical, pathophysiologic, social and health systems sciences, and humanities needed for clinical practice.
MK2. Applies foundational knowledge for clinical problem solving, diagnostic reasoning, and decision-making to clinical scenarios.
MK3. Discerns the accuracy of information and relevance to clinical problems.
MK4. Demonstrates knowledge of research design, interpretation, and application to clinical questions.
MK5. Accesses information relevant to clinical problems using appropriate resources, including emerging technologies.

Practice Based Learning & Improvement

Integrates feedback, evidence, and reflection to adapt behavior, foster improvement, and cultivate lifelong learning.

PBLI1. Seeks and incorporates feedback and assessment data to improve performance.
PBLI2. Identifies opportunities for growth in one’s own performance through informed self-assessment and reflective practice.
PBLI3. Develops, implements, and reassesses learning and improvement goals.
PBLI4. Locates, critically appraises, and synthesizes information to support evidence-informed, patient-centered clinical decisions.
PBLI5. Demonstrates inquiry and ability to grow and seek new knowledge.

Interpersonal Communication Skills

Effectively communicates and interacts with patients, caregivers, and the health care team to contribute to high-quality, patient-centered care.

ICS1. Collaborates with patients, caregivers, and team members and communities to enhance the therapeutic relationship.
ICS2. Collaborates with health care and administrative team members to enhance team function.
ICS3. Demonstrates active listening.
ICS4. Communicates clearly, accurately, and compassionately in verbal, nonverbal, written, and electronic formats.
ICS5. Demonstrates skills in educating patients, caregivers, peers, team members, and vulnerable populations.
ICS6. Formulates and shares feedback constructively with others.

Professionalism

Demonstrates integrity, respect, and ethical reasoning, and promotes inclusion of difference in all interaction to improve health care for patients, communities, and populations.

P1. Demonstrates respect and compassion for patients, caregivers, families, and team members.
P2. Safeguards patient privacy, confidentiality, and autonomy.
P3. Applies ethical principles and reasoning to guide behavior.
P4. Adapts actions and communication according to the situation.
P5. Acknowledges mistakes and acts to address them.
P6. Identifies personal limits of knowledge and skill and seeks help appropriately.
P7. Identifies personal biases and strategies to mitigate their effects.
P8. Demonstrates humility and a willingness to learn from others with different backgrounds and experiences.
P9. Recognizes and addresses personal well-being needs that may impact professional performance.
P10. Completes duties and tasks in a thorough, reliable, and timely manner.

Systems-Based Practice

Applies knowledge of the larger context of health, including its social and structural determinants, and of systems and resources within and outside of health care, to optimize high-quality care for patients, communities, and populations.

SPB1. Recognizes mechanisms to reduce disparities and advance health equity in patient care, communities, and health care systems.
SBP2. Adapts performance to various health care teams, communities, delivery settings, and systems.
SBP3. Collaborates in transitions and coordination of patient care.
SBP4. Identifies the risks and benefits of using current and emerging technologies in patient care.
SBP5. Identifies patient safety concerns, systems issues and opportunities for quality improvement.
SBP6. Acknowledges health policies and financial contexts of health care and their impact on health care delivery.
SBP7. Applies knowledge of local population and community health needs, disparities, and resources.