The Year 4 curriculum at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) prepares students for residency training through experiences designed to promote advanced knowledge and skill development in an individualized manner. The year offers ample elective time for senior students to design a course of study that is both personalized and defining.
Innovative opportunities in the Year 4 curriculum include:
Sub-internship options in a variety of fields
Core competency training in economics and law in medicine, teaching skills, and leadership in health care
Specialty-specific skills-based preparation for supervised practice in residency
Medical Student Research Day to showcase student research and scholarship
Opportunities to graduate with "Distinction in Research," "Distinction in Medical Education” and/or “Distinction in Global Health”
Sub-Internship in Medicine, Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, or Surgery: As a fourth year student, you chose and complete one of four sub-internships. The four-week sub-internship provides senior students with increasing responsibility for patient care and an opportunity to function as a more fully integrated member of the medical team on the inpatient services. You render direct patient care and assume all the responsibilities of an intern with a reduced load. The sub-intern works directly under the resident and/or fellow and is responsible for discussing all care issues with the house staff on a daily basis. The sub-intern also works closely with the service attending.
Sub-internships include:
Medicine Sub-Internship focuses on General Internal Medicine or specialty services including Cardiology, Hematology and Oncology, and Liver Medicine.
Pediatrics Sub-Internship Students can rank their preference for the Pediatric inpatient floor, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit or Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.
Obstetrics-Gynecology Sub-Internship Students can choose to focus on Maternal Fetal Medicine or Gynecology Oncology.
Surgery Sub-Internship Student can become an active member of the inpatient surgical team.
Emergency Medicine This four-week clerkship helps students improve their evaluation and presentation skills and practice medical decision-making under the supervision of emergency medicine faculty. Clinical experiences in the Emergency Department allow students to evaluate patients of all ages with acute, urgent, and critical complaints; develop their procedural skills; and apply evidence-based medicine principles to plan appropriate diagnostic strategies and therapy.
Introduction to Internship This two-week clerkship focuses on developing skills for internship. Topics include acute management issues and advanced communication and procedural skills. Teaching modalities include small-group sessions, evidence-based medicine exercises, and simulator encounters. The clerkship is offered in the second semester of the fourth year.
InFocus weeks are innovative and immersive courses taught through all four years of the ISMMS program. They provide core curricula in topics critical to medical practice and biomedical research in the 21st century. During these weeks students have no other class obligations. In Year 4, the two-week InFocus block focuses on leadership, teaching skills, and the economics and law of medicine. Year 4 students join together for small-group sessions, team-based activities, and interactive discussions. Scheduled during the first two weeks of March, this session encompasses the Medical Student Research Day and concludes with Match Day.
The core curriculum focuses on the following topics:
Leadership in Health Care This core leadership skill-building curriculum is designed to provide competency in navigating and implementing reform in a complex health care system through self-reflection on leadership qualities and barriers to effective leadership, effective communication and multi-disciplinary cooperation, conflict management and negotiation, and vision development.
Teaching Skills This InFocus theme provides a comprehensive foundation in the principles of practical teaching techniques. Students participate in small-group workshops about learning theories and effective teaching techniques, and practice their skills.
Economics and Law of Medicine These sessions introduce you to core concepts in health care economics and law. Through interactive discussions and presentations, you explore funding, payer systems, health reform, and financial management. You learn from legal experts to support your understanding of the regulatory aspects of medicine, medical malpractice, intellectual property, and litigation and licensure.
Electives facilitate self-directed learning and encourage students to experience new opportunities and explore career options. Students have a generous 18 w
The Year 2 curriculum at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) builds on the foundational scientific principles taught in Year 1 and emphasizes an organ system-based approach to the pathophysiology and treatment of illness and disease. In addition, students apply and refine core patient care skills through longitudinal ambulatory and inpatient clinical exposure.
The second year includes a formal skills-based curriculum in research data analysis as well as an emphasis on advocacy, human rights, evidence-based medicine, and career planning. In addition, students pursue milestone-based, self-directed learning, discovery, and leadership development opportunities during the protected half-days of Flex Time.
Innovative opportunities in Year 2 include:
Core competency training in human rights, advocacy, and evidence-based medicine
Formal coursework on data analysis and research dissemination
In-depth and personalized career planning and guidance
Continued mentorship and guidance in required research
Frontiers in Science lecture series and exposure to innovative researchers throughout the year
Third-year preview embedding Year 2 students with near-peer educators in the clinical workplace to prepare for Year 3
Brain and Behavior: This interdisciplinary course addresses structural, functional, genomic, and biochemical aspects of the neurological and psychiatric systems, and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs. You learn about normal and abnormal functioning of the brain and mind.
Pulmonary Pathophysiology: You will study diseases affecting the respiratory system and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
Cardiovascular Pathophysiology: This course provides a clinically-oriented framework for understanding common pathophysiologic derangements of normal cardiac function and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
Gastrointestinal-Liver Pathophysiology: This course explores diseases affecting the digestive system and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs. It emphasizes the mechanistic basis of digestive diseases, with a strong underpinning in pathology and therapeutics.
Hematology Pathophysiology: You will learn about the normal physiologic production and regulation of blood cells, the pathophysiologic events leading to disruption of the normal blood system, and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
Musculoskeletal Pathophysiology: You learn about a series of diseases that overlap the disciplines of pathology, radiology, orthopedics, and rheumatology. The course bridges the gap between basic science and its clinical application to diagnosis and treatment of connective-tissue diseases.
Sexual and Reproductive Health: This course addresses the fundamental issues of female and male sexual and reproductive health, and explores the pathophysiology of common conditions of these systems and the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
Endocrinology Pathophysiology: In this class, you learn about the pathophysiology of common endocrinological diseases, as well as the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
Renal Pathophysiology: This course introduces students to kidney homeostasis and the pathophysiology of renal disorders. It emphasizes the therapeutic and adverse actions of major classes of clinically-used drugs.
InFocus weeks are innovative and immersive courses taught through all four years of the ISMMS program, focusing on vital topics for medical practice and biomedical research in the 21st century. During these weeks you do not have other class obligations. In Year 2, InFocus weeks continue to emphasize developing critical research training skills and relevant content areas.
Courses include:
Research and Scholarship: You develop skills in data analysis and dissemination. The course focuses on advanced concepts of hypothesis testing and statistical inference as well as on presentation skills and dissemination of scholarly work.
Evidence-Based Medicine: You learn the fundamental principles of evidence-based medicine and participate in journal clubs to become familiar with current research, learn to critically evaluate research studies, and facilitate clinical application of research findings. This curriculum provides a bridge from more formal learning in Years 1 and 2 to clinical clerkships in Year 3.
Career Planning: This program provides opportunities to explore specialties and make informed decisions about your career path through programming, individualized counseling, small-group activities, seminars, student-run specialty interest groups, and personal exploration. You are exposed to four themes: understanding yourself, exploring options, choosing a specialty, and getting into residency.
Advocacy and Human Rights: This InFocus theme examines the intersection of health and human rights with a focus on the application of human rights concepts for promoting and protecting health. Through case-based sessions, you will examine the framework and genesis of the field and analyze particular topic areas including environmental health, gender and sexual violence, mass incarceration, infectious disease, nutrition, mental health, and disaster relief.
Frontiers in Science talks showcase cutting-edge translational biomedical research and real world applications of scientific knowledge. Each Year 2 course invites a translational researcher who is doing relevant and meaningful work to lead an interactive large group session with students.
A protected half-day per week in Year 2 allows you time and space to pursue self-directed learning, discovery, self-care and leadership development opportunities. Flex Time also permits you to meet competency-based milestones and participate in relevant content sessions focused on cross-cutting themes like mentorship, feedback, careers in medicine and science, and learning skills.
The Year 3 curriculum at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (ISMMS) combines clinical rotations in core clinical areas with 10 weeks of elective time for career exploration. The schedule is comprised of four 12-week modules offering exposure to ambulatory care across the lifespan, anesthesiology, internal medicine, neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, psychiatry, and surgery.
Innovative opportunities in the Year 3 curriculum include:
Practical and relevant radiology embedded into core clerkships
Focused career and residency planning and guidance
Core competency training in quality, patient safety, and health systems science
Substantial elective time to explore careers and experience different specialties
Longitudinal integrated ambulatory clerkship for select students
Option of participating in an additional scholarly year to conduct research
This clerkship allows students to care for pediatric patients across a variety of settings including inpatient, outpatient, and in the well-baby nursery. You address issues specific to the newborn period, childhood, and adolescence by focusing on growth and development, and by emphasizing the impact of family, community, and society on child health and well-being.
This clerkship provides you with opportunities to learn about the particular features of obstetrics, gynecology, and primary and preventive women's health.
This clerkship enables you to care for adult inpatients in two settings a tertiary care center and a community hospital. During the clerkship, you actively participate in the care of patients and apply your knowledge of pathophysiologic principles to clinical care.
This six-week clerkship prepares you to provide comprehensive community-based health care to individuals and families across the age spectrum. Evidence-based preventive medicine, team-based management of chronic disease, urgent outpatient care, patient advocacy, the medical home, and public health are additional areas of focus in this clerkship. Students also have opportunities to participate in home-based primary care, hospital at home experiences, nursing home care and palliative medicine.
This clerkship in perioperative medicine allows you to participate in the comprehensive care of the surgical patient from the perspectives of surgery and anesthesiology, including initial surgical work-up, pre-operative assessment and optimization, anesthetic management, surgery and the surgical environment, and post-operative care including acute pain management. You will experience inpatient and outpatient venues for surgery and anesthesia, as well as the surgical ICU.
This clerkship prepares students to perform a competent neurologic examination, recognize and contextualize abnormal findings, formulate a neurologic differential diagnosis, design evidence-based initial neurologic diagnostic testing, and develop an evidence-based neurologic management plan.
This clerkship focuses on learning the presentations of major psychiatric disorders, becoming familiar with psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatment options, formulating psychiatric diagnoses and treatment plans, and learning about the rapidly emerging advances in neuroscience that promise substantial improvements in the treatment of psychiatric illnesses.
The Online Radiology Course (ORC) consists of 18 required and 1 optional interactive virtual patient cases, which encompass the learning objectives of the Association of University Radiologists (AUR) and the Alliance of Medical Student Educators in Radiology (AMSER) National Medical Student Radiology Curriculum. Each of the 18 modules has been correlated with the core clerkships and teaches a patient-centered approach to imaging, fosters self-directed and independent study, and builds clinical problem-solving skills.
Interclerkship Ambulatory Care Track (InterACT): This 12.5-week integrated clerkship provides select third-year medical students with a longitudinal clinical experience in the foundations of ambulatory medicine and chronic illness care. It prepares and develops students committed to the practice of longitudinal patient-centered care who are able to navigate health care systems while addressing the social, economic, and cultural factors that affect chronic illness care in an urban setting. Additionally, it enables students to cement meaningful relationships with mentors in several fields of medicine, as well as to learn and teach humanism, advocacy, and interdisciplinary care in the context of caring for the medically disenfranchised.
InFocus weeks are innovative and immersive courses taught through all four years of the ISMMS program. The sessions provide core curricula in topics critical to medical practice and biomedical research in the 21st century. During Year 3, the three InFocus weeks emphasize patient safety and quality, health system science, reflection, and career planning.
Patient Safety, Quality and Health System Science: This InFocus theme is designed to expose you to principles in patient safety, quality and health system science through practical experiences and small-group discussions. Human and system elements of error, models for improvement, and theories of change will serve as the foundations of this course. You will have an opportunity to examine and analyze process maps to improve patient outcomes.
Reflection: These facilitated sessions are opportunities for you to process and understand your clinical experiences in an effort to inform your future actions. This longitudinal experience is designed to promote learning from experience, encourage dialogue and sharing of perspectives, promote professionalism, and support reflective practice.
Career Planning: This InFocus theme is designed to support you in making informed decisions about your career path and navigating the residency application process. You participate in advising cohort sessions, interactive sessions with physicians who have chosen a variety of career paths, and specialty-specific small-group sessions.
comprises a range of courses aligned with the mission and vision of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Nexus courses are geared toward Year 1 and 2 medical students and allow you to gain insights, knowledge, and skills to enhance your practice of medicine. These optional course offerings enable you to deepen your knowledge in particular areas of interest or discover an entirely new discipline, as well as to engage with faculty and other students with shared interests.”
Electives facilitate self-directed learning and encourage students to experience new opportunities and explore career options. Students are offered a generous 10 weeks of elective time in Year 3, which is spread across three of the four modules. For more information, please visit .
