Doctor of Medicine (MD); 4-year program

Knowledge:

• Understand normal human structure and function, disease mechanisms, and pathology.

• Identify causes, manifestations, and prevention of common diseases.

• Recognize social, cultural, and economic factors affecting health.

• Apply scientific methods, medical laws, ethics, and UAE healthcare systems.

Skills:

• Take accurate patient history and perform complete/focused examinations.

• Apply problem-solving to reach diagnoses.

• Perform basic clinical procedures and life support.

• Develop management and treatment plans for acute/chronic conditions.

• Interpret lab tests, document information, and understand population health.

• Know professional limits and seek help when needed.

Competence:

• Autonomy: Apply knowledge independently, adapt to change, ensure quality care.

• Role in Context: Work as teacher, mentor, leader, and team member; respect interdisciplinary roles; manage resources effectively.

• Self-development: Commit to lifelong learning, ethics, reflection, and self-care; maintain integrity, confidentiality, and respect for all.

Bachelor degree in medical sciences or related field with minimum GPA 3.5/4.0, English proficiency IELTS 6.5 or TOEFL iBT 79, medical admission test, healthcare field experience, personal interview

Our program is 4-year long and runs in two serial phases as follows:

Phase II – Two years of Pre-clerkships (Years 3 and 4) – consisting mainly of weekly disease-anchored Problem-Based Learning (PBL) type blocks covering all the systems. The robust clinical skills program runs in parallel with all the blocks. Other longitudinal (parallel) courses are offered, including courses like biostatistics and epidemiology, primary and rural health and family medicine, health informatics, economics and management, behavioral sciences, addiction and substance use, and research. The phase culminates in an integrated multisystem block at the end of year 4 to help the students prepare for the IFOM Basic Science Exam as mandated by the CAA.
Phase III – Two years of Clerkships (Years 5 and 6) – consisting of 20-week semesters over the two years and an additional six weeks of clinical electives during the summer of between year 5 and year 6. Students are expected to sit for the IFOM Clinical Science Exam by the end of year 6 as mandated by the CAA.
Our program is designed as an integrated, system-based, spiral curriculum, which is divided into two phases. There is both horizontal and vertical integration such that as the student progresses through the phases, they revisit the same organ systems at higher levels of complexity and clinical content until graduation.

A unique feature of the AUCoM curriculum is the application of “Parallel Courses”. These are semester long courses running alongside (parallel to) the integrated blocks. In many instances, the parallel courses align their content to the running blocks. Parallel courses address one of the main criticisms in integrated PBL-type curricula; the niggling feeling that the students are not learning core concepts in sufficient depth. A secondary advantage of the parallel courses is that the program has greater flexibility in formally introducing new or topical subjects into the curriculum, e.g. simple one or two credit hour courses in Health Informatics, Economics, and Management, and Addiction and Substance Use, etc. has potential to greatly enrich the curriculum. Such flexibility is lacking or limited in the common integrated curricula on offer at most medical schools in the region. Experience at a young medical school (<10 years), applying a similar mix of integrated and parallel courses has produced graduates who are exceptionally competitive in external benchmarking and licentiate assessments.