Medical Education - Entry-level Education

Entry-level Education

Entry-level medical education programs are tertiary-level courses undertaken at a medical school. Depending on jurisdiction and university, these may be either undergraduate-entry (most of Europe, India, China), or graduate-entry programs (mainly Australia, Canada, United States).

In general, initial training is taken at medical school. Traditionally initial medical education is divided between preclinical and clinical studies. The former consists of the basic sciences such as anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, pathology. The latter consists of teaching in the various areas of clinical medicine such as internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, and surgery. However, medical programs are using systems-based curricula in which learning is integrated, and several institutions do this.

There has been a proliferation of programmes that combine medical training with research (D.O./Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D.) or management programmes (D.O./MBA or M.D./ MBA), although this has been criticised because extended interruption to clinical study has been shown to have a detrimental effect on ultimate clinical knowledge.