Phoenix Track: Curricular Description
The Phoenix track is organized into seven system-oriented blocks taught in Year 1 and Year 2 that present core elements utilizing case-based instruction, team learning and interactive lecture techniques. Woven through these blocks are experiences and content related to the Biomedical Informatics, Personalized Medicine and the required Scholarly Project. Finally, several key longitudinal courses are synchronized with block content and serve to amplify and integrate the connections between these key areas of emphasis and between the areas of emphasis and the core curriculum. These include Capstones (one week experiences after each major block which focus on clinical applications of the block), a Learning Community (comprising the entire class of 24 students and focused on key topics related to the Scholarly Project component), a Doctoring experience (to teach history taking, physical examination, presentation and clinical reasoning skills) and a Longitudinal Clinical Experience in which students follow a panel of patients in a primary care setting during Year 1 and Year 2.
» View a Phoenix Track Year 1 & Year 2 Schematic.
» View a Phoenix Track weekly schedule template.
The Phoenix track is based upon the core institutional objectives of The University of Arizona College of Medicine. In addition to these core objectives, the Phoenix track offers enhanced instruction and experiences in two areas rapidly growing in content and importance, Biomedical Informatics and Personalized Medicine. It also contains a required, four-year Scholarly Project to demonstrate to students how new biomedical information is assessed and acquired. The Scholarly Project also emphasizes critical thinking and lifelong learning skills.
The core (institutional) objectives of the College of Medicine include broadly worded objectives that include biomedical informatics and personalized medicine content. These topics will be covered in both tracks. The primary difference in how they will be taught are the enhanced content, emphasis and experience in the Phoenix track. This increased emphasis is reflected in the more detailed objectives for these areas in the Phoenix track.
The relationships between the core objectives and these three areas of emphasis are depicted in the figure below:
The three areas of emphasis for the Phoenix track are:
- Scholarly Project: The Scholarly Project is intended to develop critical thinking, skills in evaluation of new data, an appreciation for the methods by which new scholarly information is generated, and skills for lifelong learning. This required component of the Phoenix track provides medical students with faculty-mentored scholarly experiences and structured activities in one of the following four concentration areas:
- Biomedical Informatics
- Medical Humanities & Ethics
- Molecular Medicine
- Public Health, Population Medicine, Policy and Prevention (P4)
- ยป View all the Scholarly Project descriptions.
- Each concentration area has a director and 4-6 core faculty members who are responsible for advising students and ensuring that the overall learning objectives for that concentration are met. They also assist students in getting matched with Scholarly Project Mentors who supervise individual students in their scholarly projects.
- The Scholarly Project Learning Community, which will consist of all Phoenix track students, is designed to bring together students to learn about topics that are common to the four areas of concentration. This learning community will address competencies in:
- Critical thinking
- Lifelong learning
- Information literacy
- Ethics
- Informatics
- Research methodologies
- Each student is required to select their concentration area by week 12 of Year 1. Starting in week 13, in-depth training in each concentration area is provided for students selecting that concentration area. This training extends through the remainder of Year 1 and Year 2 and also serves to expose the students to potential project areas and mentors. By week 23 of Year 1, each student will select a specific project area and Scholarly Project Mentor. All concentration directors are available to assist students in these selection processes. Exceptions to the timing milestones are permissible with approval of the Scholarly Project Course Director.
- Biomedical Informatics: The Phoenix track Biomedical Informatics training integrates academic and clinical experiences to develop clinicians with enhanced informatics competencies. The graduates of this curriculum will be prepared to be leaders in incorporating the principles and practice of biomedical informatics.
- This aim is accomplished by a highly innovative curriculum which includes supporting evidence-based medical education, practice and research using unique synergies created between the College of Medicine, the newly formed Biomedical Informatics Institute at Arizona State University, and Phoenix teaching hospitals and physicians.
- Personalized Medicine: Personalized Medicine is defined for this purpose as seeing patient disease or disease risk in the context of biomarkers to inform optimal patient care. Students will have the opportunity to employ modern technologies such as genomics and proteomics and to learn to apply them to patient care. Students choosing the Molecular Basis of Medicine as their Scholarly Project concentration area will receive additional training in genomics and personalized medicine.
- The Phoenix environment offers unique opportunities to incorporate training in Personalized Medicine. The proximity of both Arizona State University’s Biomedical Informatics Institute and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) to the Phoenix campus of the College of Medicine has begun to foster collaborative efforts in research and education.
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