what is the curriculum of the proposed medical school (UNTMD)?

At a Town Hall meeting on August 23, 2010, President Ransom presented the future UNTMD curriculum as, “The MD School will build on the success achieved at TCOM by adopting a similar, although not identical, educational delivery model, teaching style, and curriculum, subject to meeting all the requirements for curriculum content for an MD program.”[1]

A few minor changes will involve scholarly concentrations, certificates of recognition, and inter-professional education.[2]

• The first two so-called emphases are basically elective opportunities for medical, non-medical, clinical or bench research.[3]  These elective opportunities for research are already available to the TCOM students.
• TCOM has incorporated additional research courses into its curriculum to help its students better understand the basic biomedical research element of medicine.  The course includes 24 hours of classroom instruction and additional instruction through Blackboard Vista, an on-line learning system that allows class sessions to take place outside traditional classrooms.  According to a recently published study, a biomedical research course for second-year students “appears to have increased the second year students' applied understanding of the targeted biomedical research concepts.”[4]  The areas covered include statistical significance, sample size, types of variables, phases of clinical trials, and the protection of human subjects, among other topics.[5]  This promising approach holds the potential to better prepare medical students for serving patients in a clinical environment.
• The last focus of “inter-professional education,” which echoes the recommendation by the Institute of Medicine report, “A Bridge to Quality,” states that “all health professionals should be educated to deliver patient-centered care as members of an interdisciplinary team, emphasizing evidence-based practice, quality improvement approaches and informatics.”[6]  This actually calls for earlier interaction between future physicians with other allied health professionals.  To better achieve this goal, the addition of a school of nursing or pharmacy is more appropriate than another medical school on campus of UNTHSC.

Furthermore, UNTMD will share a single corps of clinical and basic science faculty members.  Basically, UNTMD is a just duplication of TCOM except for the different title degree it will confer. UNTMD’s curriculum will offer less than the TCOM curriculum by eliminating the emphasis on the neuro-musculoskeletal component of medical education.  All DO students receive at least an extra 200 hours of instruction in osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) and a month-long core rotation in OMM.  This is another way of increasing the number of medical students at UNTHSC.  Dr. Joe Todd, chair of the Tarrant County Medical Society’s Board, said that establishing an MD school would mean a change the quantity of students at UNTHSC, but not the quality.  Dr. Todd observed that if UNTMD were developed, “We will continue to attract top quality medical students; we will just have more of them.”[7]  The solution to the physician shortage already exists—it is a strong, vibrant TCOM.

Establishing UNTMD will make UNTHSC a medical school of one body with two heads (the two administrative structures).  Adding an MD program would make UNTHSC the largest medical school in Texas with 330 students per class.  With the addition of UT Southwestern medical students, the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex would be training 560 medical students per class, while it is in other regions of Texas that the shortages are critical.

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[1] UNT Health Science Center: “Establishment of MD School: Summary of Board Briefing and Board Order.”  Slide 13 of 23.  Presented August 23, 2010.

[2] University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth: Academic and Business Plan for the Development of a Proposed MD Program (August 2010), p. 21.

[3] Ibid., p. 21.

[4] “Learning outcomes from a biomedical research course for second year osteopathic medical students.”  Osteopathic Medicine and Primary Care (2010), 4:4.  URL:  http://www.om-pc.com/content/4/1/4.

[5] Ibid., p. 5.

[6] University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth: Academic and Business Plan for the Development of a Proposed MD Program (August 2010), p. 18.

[7] Bassett, Elizabeth.  “MD school promotes new plans.”  Fort Worth Business Press, September 22, 2010.  Accessed September 23, 2010.  URL:  http://www.fwbusinesspress.com/main.asp?SectionID=14&SubSectionID=39&ArticleID=13192