In For The Long Haul: Teaching Immunology In A Longitudinal Medical Curriculum

Abstract In recent years, undergraduate medical education has undergone significant transformations, including stronger integration of clinical and basic science content in both early and late phases of the curriculum; frequent replacement of traditional topic-specific courses with system-specific blocks in which all basic sciences can be weaved in longitudinally; and an increasing utilization of active learning approaches to replace traditional lectures. At the same time, immunology has greatly expanded its relevance to clinical care, impacting an increasing number of medical subspecialties. As a consequence, medical graduates now require a higher degree of immunology literacy than ever before. Here, I will discuss the experience of building (and sustaining) a longitudinally integrated immunology curriculum at a new (now 7-year-old) medical school. I will first highlight a number of key challenges, including the ballooning amount of information that medical students are required to learn in increasingly time-constrained curricula; the balancing of the competing needs of updating content for scientific advancements vs maximizing student success in the slower-moving but ever-important medical board exams; collaborating with faculty colleagues whose training in immunology often happened decades in the past; and dealing with content gaps and redundancies in shifting course curricula. Lastly, I will provide some examples of how we have addressed some of these challenges locally, while others may require more concerted, global solutions.