AN INTEGRATED PRECLERKSHIP CURRICULUM IN NEUROSCIENCE, PSYCHIATRY, AND NEUROLOGY

The study's objective was to promote understanding of the integration of preclerkship learning in neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology an d to share the authors' experience with such a program. A dualism, whi ch may have survived in the past for lack of robust evidence of mind-b rain relationships, is now increasingly outmoded. Medical school educa tion should reflect the increasing coherence to be found in these fiel ds. The authors describe curricular and course innovations and revisio ns at Harvard Medical School that have been implemented in successive iterations over the past decade. These changes have depended upon mult idisciplinary leadership, planning, and faculty participation, as well as faculty development and closer coordination between classroom-and hospital-based activity. A hybrid, problem-based block course in the s econd year integrates basic science with neurologic and psychiatric to pics that are aligned with practice of relevant clinical skills. The a uthors have achieved a high level of integration and coordination of t hese subjects at preclerkship levels in the domains of both knowledge and skills. The students, as well as the faculty, strongly endorse an intellectually coherent and clinically relevant program of integrated preclerkship learning in neuroscience, psychiatry, and neurology.