For graduating class of 2024, 2025 or 2026
Training in the facilities of the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical complex, presents you with a variety of settings and patient populations that is hard to match anywhere in the world. Exposure to a variety of clinical settings and patient populations throughout your clinical rotations will prepare you to succeed in any situation your career presents.
Core Clerkships
The clinical curriculum begins in January of your second year. This phase of your training uses patient-centered learning techniques, which include taking histories, performing physical examinations, reviewing laboratory results, and working with faculty physicians to manage patients through diagnosis and treatment.
The Clinical Years
The charts below show an M.D. students typical path through the clinical curriculum.
Year 2 - Spring
Year 3 - Fall
Year 3- Spring
Year 4 - Fall to Spring
Customizing Your Education
You may tailor your clinical experience to your interests by pursuing other specialties through rotations called “selectives," a sub-internship, and through lots of electives.
Pathways span the four years of medical school and include both classroom, clinical and/or research activities in the specific areas of interest.
Clinical Sciences Course Descriptions
The required courses within the clinical curriculum provide you the opportunity to build skills and explore various issues.
* Course credits pertain to 2023-2024 academic year.
APEX: MCAPX-MAIN
The goal of this course is to promote the transition of a knowledgeable fourth year graduating student to a professional physician in training. The course allows students to individualize the educational experience to meet their personal interests and needs. It offers a unique, practical and interactive focus on solidifying students' medical school experiences while developing and fine-tuning skills that will help them enter their internship and residency with confidence.
Credits: 2.0
Course Director: Uma Ayyala, M.D.
Associate Course Director: Loan Nguyen, M.D.
Determinants, Disparities, and Social/Population Health (DDASH): MCDSH-MAIN
The goal of DDASH is to familiarize medical students with upstream social and structural factors that influence health outcomes in patients. Students learn to appraise social determinants of health, consider elements of healthcare access, economic instability, social support, community cohesion, etc. and deliberate on policies that seed health disparities through these domains. This lens explores the roots of existing health inequities while reviewing intersecting anthropological and social paradigms that form the backdrop of mistrust in healthcare, chronic disease, homelessness, addiction, etc. The course uses team projects, simulation exercises, and case studies guiding students to recognize, appropriately screen, and expand management plans for unmet social needs in patients, thereby increasing the impact of their clinical practice. Students participate in dedicated discussions on implicit bias within healthcare and gain exposure to bias reduction strategies effective for delivering culturally appropriate medical care. Examining these premises, directly or indirectly, aims to foster the development of professional attributes of integrity, respect, inclusion, compassion, justice, and empathy that are foundational for building awareness, attitude, and advocacy for equitable healthcare.
Credits: 2.5
Course Director: Malvika Juneja, M.D.
Associate Course Director: Victoria McCurry, M.D.
Patient, Physician and Society (PPS) 3: MBPP3-MAIN
This course teaches students the foundational clinical skills necessary for entering clerkships. The goals of this course are to continue to develop patient-centered interviewing skills to obtain a complete history; correlate pathophysiology learned in the morning classes with abnormal physical findings on hospitalized patients; and to inculcate altruistic and compassionate patient care.
Credits: 2.50
Course Director: Rajeev Balchandani, M.D.
Associate Course Director: Anita Kusnoor, M.D.
Transition to Clinical Rotations: MBITC-MAIN
The goal of this course is to facilitate the transition of second-year Baylor medical students from the basic sciences to the clinical years. The goal is to provide basic skills and information to allow students to readily participate in patient care. At the end of the course, second-year students will be able to describe effective studying strategies for clinical rotations; demonstrate how to glove and gown using sterile technique; maintain sterile environment in the OR; navigate the EMR to find pertinent information; manage commonly described interpersonal and intrateam stressors on the wards; understand what is expected on a typical day on the wards for a given clerkship and how to succeed as a ward clerk; compose a SOAP note; and to discriminate between appropriate and inappropriate types of public disclosure concerning clinical experiences.
Credits: 0.75
Course Co-Directors: Meghan McClure, M.D.
Course Co-Director: Katie Scally, M.D.
Requirements
View requirements for Degree Doctor of Medicine and Core Competency Graduation Goals.
Compact
View Compact Between Teachers, Learners and Educational Staff.
Progress Notes
Progress Notes is the student magazine of Baylor College of Medicine. In it, students of the College share their stories from the clinics, their thoughts on medicine and healthcare, and stories from the frontlines of research.
Glued feet: The importance of compassion and healing in medicine
Read this third-year medical student's reflections on a patient encounter that led to the realization that simple acts of compassion can have a significant impact on a patient and a physician.
The article is published in Progress Notes, the student magazine of Baylor College of Medicine. In it, students of the College share their stories from the clinics, their thoughts on medicine and healthcare, and stories from the frontlines of research.
Growing pains: Clinical training during COVID-19
A third-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine reflects on hospital training during COVID-19. Read the article.
