Core Inquiry Curriculum
The Core Inquiry Curriculum (CIC), along with Inquiry Immersion in January, compromises the major components of the longitudinal element Inquiry during Foundations 1 (F1). Tomorrow's physicians will have a vast and ever-expanding body of information at their fingertips. To best serve their patients, these physicians will need to be skilled at identifying, critically analyzing, synthesizing, and applying relevant information to their patients. The activities in the Core Inquiry Curriculum (CIC) focus on using the Inquiry Algorithm to develop these skills.
The Inquiry Algorithm
During CIC, weekly sessions students engage in weekly, student-led, faculty-facilitated small-group sessions in which they explore current, complex, and cutting-edge scientific or health care problems. These activities are designed to foster an Inquiry Habit of Mind in our students. A physician who embodies an Inquiry Habit of Mind embodies the following lifelong practice characteristics:
• Curious, logical, and skeptical
• Comfort with ambiguity
• Integrates information and applies it to new problems
• Recognizes limits of existing (and one’s own) knowledge
These are skills you will use daily as you strive to provide cutting edge, evidenced based medicine to your patients.
Components of Core Inquiry Curriculum
Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Population Sciences (EBPS) Curriculum
EBPS compromises tools that all Domains of Understanding rely upon, allowing for the interpretation of data and for researchers and clinicians to test hypotheses of complex questions. The EBPS curriculum during F1 is imbedded within CIC. Through lectures and small groups, the curriculum provides essential training in biostatistical and epidemiological methods to empower students to critically assess evidence from published studies and apply their assessment in practice later in a Deep Dive.
The curriculum is divided into six blocks—each intentionally layered within clinical and foundational science content.
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Block 1: What is epidemiology and biostatics and why should a physician care? Foundational motivation and structure of human subject research – Ground School
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Block 2: How do we determine cause? Fundamentals of Causal Inference. - Ground School
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Block 3: How to address causation in observational studies and what can be done next once causation is established? More advanced aspects of causal inference. - ABC 1
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Block 4: What can we predict: Fundamentals of prediction and uses in diagnosis and prognosis. - Health and the Individual
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Block 5: What to do after the evidence is in: Cost-effectiveness and dissemination. - Health and Society
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Block 6: Applications of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. - Health and Society
Journal Clubs
In these sessions, students participate as sophisticated and critical consumers of the literature. Student leaders guide groups through reading and interpretation of a scientific paper from the medical literature. These papers are chosen to integrate well with the Foundational Sciences curriculum, often providing an in-depth look at important topics, which also highlight key educational objectives, and cutting-edge or seminal research.
Inquiry Cases
These small group experiences are a major component of the Core Inquiry Curriculum throughout F1. Cases are designed to integrate critical content from the Foundational Sciences element while the subjects are designed to take students on a deep dive into important contemporary issues facing clinicians while also exercising their Inquiry skills and utilizing Problem-based Learning Discussion (PBLD).
Frontiers of Medicine
The Frontiers in Medicine (FIM) lecture series, which is often tied to the content of the concurrent Foundational Sciences content, is designed to introduce topics and methods of research that highlights the best and the brightest scholars, featured national and international figures, and aims to introduce students to the breadth and depth of faculty available as mentors at UCSF.
