New Curriculum

Beginning in September 2010, Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine will change its academic calendar to a new quarter system. The new calendar offers the fall, winter and spring quarters in 12 weeks and the summer quarter in 8 weeks. The new calendar gives students and Faculty a two week break between each quarter and offers more study time between graduation and NPLEX board examinations.

To achieve these outcomes, goals were set for the design of a revised curriculum. In this design, students  have early clinical experiences; integrated, aligned, and sequenced course content; a greater emphasis on  the history and philosophy of naturopathic medicine;  more opportunity for student choice  with didactic and clinical selectives; and a reduction in the number of classroom seat hours. Faculty will also focus on the use of teaching methodologies such as team-based learning and case-based instruction.

The new curriculum includes early clinical experiences in year one. While students will not see patients initially, they will begin to build doctor/patient communication skills allowing them the opportunity to become more comfortable in the language they use with patients. At the end of year one and into year two, students will gain experience with patients in community clinics.

 “We want students to feel like they are physicians when they begin their first day of class,” stated Dr. Becky Clark, Dean of Faculty and Curriculum Development. “We will accomplish this through Introduction to Clinical Practice and Clinical Skills Lab where they will be issued their medical equipment and begin practicing on each other. Instruction in professionalism, ethics, jurisprudence, and community medicine from day one will prepare them to go into community clinics at the end of their first year and into their second year.”

Through vertical and horizontal alignment, the curriculum will be organized and sequenced by body systems with emphasis upon excellent patient care. Under the new curriculum, the ND program classroom seat hours will be reduced by 200. This will provide students with less lecture time and more time to apply classroom learning to patient care. The new Medical Center is being designed to support students’ clinical training and achievement of their clinical competencies.

The ultimate goal is to provide students with the best medical education possible and enable them to become competent and effective Naturopathic Doctors. Throughout this process SCNM has followed all of the standards set forth by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME).

Strengths of New ND Curriculum:

1.  Early clinical exposure: Students begin clinical experiences in the first year of the program, beginning with day one.  They will have the luxury of shadowing doctors, observing patients and working on standardized patients all in an effort to hone their basic skills prior to taking on the responsibility of patient cases in clinical rotations.  This will allow for students to gain confidence and be more at ease with their ability to see patients in a clinical setting.

2.  Improved organization and sequencing of information: (Block). The Curriculum is organized by body systems, therefore students will cover a system at a time. For instance, when learning about the cardiovascular system, they will learn the anatomy, physiology, histology, pathology, etc. of the heart. This helps students to synthesize the information. It is a more effective way for a student to learn.  Other systems include: endocrine, respiratory, reproductive, skeletal, nervous, muscular, etc.  Other medical schools utilizing this approach include University of Michigan, Yale and University of Arizona.

3.  Team Based Learning: Many faculty incorporate team-based learning – where students will be working in groups designed to enhance learning, grouping people from different backgrounds/academic strengths.  In this context, group thinking has been proven to be more productive than the individual. This is utilized in 77 US medical schools, including Tulane, Duke and University of Michigan.

4.  More Efficient:  Eliminated unnecessary redundancies and reduced seat time for more hands on learning and clinical exposure

5.  We Offer Selectives: The curriculum provides opportunities for students to have options and choices in which area to focus, through the availability of electives.

6.  All of these components are designed to create an ND primed to be a self-directed lifelong learner.

Why and How did SCNM change its curriculum?

·    SCNM is always building upon its curriculum through assessment and evaluation in the interest of improvement.

·    Our new curriculum is a progressive approach to medical education and how students learn and best retain information. 

·    Many medical schools are going in this direction.

·    Students, faculty, alumni and staff were involved and committed to the long term success of students.  The curriculum is an important vehicle to student success.

New Medical Center Benefits

1.  At 12,000 sf, the SCNM Medical Center is the largest ND clinic in the southwest

2.  Design of the medical center utilized evidence based design – drawing upon studies for optimum layout, traffic flow, lighting, colors, themes.

3.  The design includes “bringing nature in” by utilizing windows which offer views to the  healing gardens that surround the new medical center

4.  The clinic has been designed so that student classrooms are in close proximity to patient exam rooms to increase efficiency and improve traffic flow.

5.  Location – the Medical Center is now on site on our main campus for a unified campus. Students do not have to drive or fight traffic during the day to get to the Medical Center

6.  Healing Spa/Hydrotherapy Suite: Offers two dry saunas and a steam room, four hydrotherapy rooms, 2 treatment rooms, and 2 colonics rooms

7.  6 classrooms; 27 patient rooms

8.  Electronic Medical Records (EMR): In the summer of 2010 SCNM’s Medical Center converted all patient records to EMR. 1^st ND school to implement this system. Benefits of this include: increased patient safety, efficiency, patient online access to personal treatment plans & prescriptions, practice-based data for research, students learn state of the art program and offered discount package upon graduation.

“Imagine a program that integrates clinical training, biomedical sciences and therapeutics throughout the entire four years. SCNM has it!” – Dr. Mittman