Doctoring
The Doctoring course enables you to experience the real world of modern medical practice — starting in your very first week of medical school. First offered in fall 2005 as part of a comprehensive curriculum overhaul, Doctoring is a required course for all first- and second-year medical students. You'll spend one half-day a week in the office of a pediatrician, ob/gyn, internist, or a family doc, working alongside a physician-mentor who guides your every step. You will observe and practice crucial clinical skills, such as medical interviewing, history-taking, physical diagnosis, and professional conduct, that you've first learned on campus in small group settings.
Doctoring provides role models for the type of patient-centered, ethical, and humane physicians Alpert Medical School aims to produce. This early exposure to patients and medical practice is excellent preparation for your immersion in the hospitals during clinical rotations in your third and fourth years. Doctoring also gives you a context for the immense amount of science you must master in your core academic courses, reinforcing the importance of viewing every patient as an individual, as a person with a family, and a member of a community. Mostly, Doctoring reminds you why you wanted to come to med school in the first place — to help people.