Early patient exposure and the option to pursue research or an additional degree during the program's third year, make Duke University Med School a unique choice for applicants [Show summary]

Dr. Linton Yee, Associate Dean for Admissions at Duke University School of Medicine discusses the program’s integrative learning approach that offers students hands-on training from day one. 

Interested in doing research during your time at medical school? Duke University School of Medicine might be the program for you. [Show notes]

How would you like to take the entire didactic portion of medical school in the first year of medical school and spend your third year doing research or pursuing another degree? That's what students at Duke School of Medicine can do. We're going to hear from Duke School of Medicine's Associate Dean of Admissions right now.

Welcome to the 432nd episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in.

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Our guest today is Dr. Linton Yee, Associate Dean for Admissions at Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Yee earned his bachelor's and MD at the University of Hawaii. He then did his residency in Pediatrics at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and a fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. From 1996 to 2007. He practiced and taught Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Hawaii and California, before taking a position at Duke University as an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics’ Division of Emergency Medicine, and a pediatric emergency room physician. He's also Duke Medical's Associate Dean for Admissions, and it's in that capacity that I have invited him back to Admissions Straight Talk for a show devoted to Duke Medical.

Dr. Yee, can you give an overview of Duke Medical's highly distinctive curriculum? [2:11]

We've had this curriculum in place for a number of years, and the goal is to produce leaders in medicine and also to help the applicant and the student, eventually, understand the link between clinical medicine and research, and how both of these things help to promote, advance, and improve medical practice. Our curriculum is changing right now, and we're putting in new elements in what we call ”patient first.” I think all the applicants and med students out there have to understand that the patient is the center of your universe and everything you do has to be done to improve their well-being. So we're shifting a lot of our thinking now, and actually using the immersion of the med students into the first year, from day one so you're seeing patients from day one. We're then integrating a lot of the biomedical concepts with that. So you'll have early clinical exposure, and you'll have a lot of the foundations within that first year. That first year is still your basic science year, but with a lot of clinical elements integrated in.