Curriculum

Chart Your Curricular Path

Ohio State is unique by offering the choice of two curricular pathways designed to fit your learning style during your first two years of medical school. Your first patient contact occurs in your first year as well.

Ohio State educators are constantly looking for innovative ways to help you become the best physician you can be -- a physician ready for the clinical side of medicine, but also with an understanding of the basic ethical, policy, cultural, business and research issues involved in medicine today.

The INTEGRATED PATHWAY, broken down into body systems-oriented content, fuses the basic and clinical sciences. This pre-clinical curriculum combines methods of student-centered active learning, small group case-based discussion, and lectures. Taught in “blocks,” each subject area includes normal histology and physiology, as well as pathophysiology, pathology, and pharmacology.

The INDEPENDENT STUDY PATHWAY students utilize highly structured objectives, resource guides, web and computer-based materials to learn on their own. The ISP curriculum is organized into interdisciplinary study units called modules, arranged by organ systems, focusing on Normal Human (healthy) the first year and Pathophysiology the second year.

EARLY CLINICAL EXPOSURE begins in your first year working with a primary care physician where you will begin to learn how to evaluate patients. Your experiences in the patient care world is a gradual process and increases as you you develop history taking, interviewing, physical exam, and psycho-social skills. Ohio State’s Clinical Skills Education & Assessment Center allows you to build your clinical proficiency in a low-pressure setting that includes individuals trained to portray patient cases.