We have intentionally designed our MD program to provide the foundational skills that you will need as a physician, in settings that mimic the places you will work once you’ve begun your career. Our full-time faculty will make your education their top priority. Our affiliated, partnering faculty will introduce you — across a range of clinical locations — to best practices and a diversity of patient populations.
From our interprofessional learning environment on the North Haven Campus to our team-oriented curriculum and classrooms, we encourage the kind of collaboration that is becoming an important hallmark of good medical care.
Every part of our program supports our vision of educating patient‐centered physicians who are effective partners and leaders in the delivery of health care in the communities they serve.
Our innovative curriculum combines individual attention, interdisciplinary learning experiences, extraordinary hands-on experience and an emphasis on evidence-based and patient-centered practice.
During the first two years, the curriculum is organized around integrated system blocks, providing students with a 360-degree view of each organ system through the lenses of three courses: Foundations of Medicine, Clinical Arts and Sciences, and Scholarly Reflection and Concentration Capstone. A highlight of the curriculum is the Medical Student Home (MeSH) program, a longitudinal, mentored clinical experience that acts as a “practical laboratory” for students to work with patients in community practice.
Throughout all four years, you will gain substantial clinical experience and work with faculty mentors. Our clinical partners provide an extraordinarily wide range of settings where you can interact with patients and complete electives — all designed to allow you to explore your options and passions for the type of medicine you want to practice.
Learn more about the curriculum
Foundations of Medicine course
March 15, 2023
In the modern health care setting, doctors work collaboratively with nurses, physician assistants and other health care professionals. At Quinnipiac, we place an emphasis on giving you opportunities to learn alongside students in our nursing and health sciences programs.
Much of that collaboration is facilitated through our Center for Interprofessional Healthcare Education, which offers innovative opportunities for students to practice together, identify effective delivery options and enhance each other’s clinical skills. It’s a conduit for sharing knowledge across disciplines and encouraging creative problem-solving in ways that deepen empathy and lead to new best practices.
Center for Interprofessional Healthcare Education
The School of Medicine is also home to three institutes for excellence that provide additional depth of learning and opportunities for students — the Institute for Primary Care, the Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine and the Institute for Global Public Health. From exploring contemporary issues of mental health to providing service to wounded veterans or enabling fieldwork in underserved villages in Africa and Latin America, the institutes support our mission of teaching, research and service while enhancing essential practice areas that are urgently needed in our country and our world.
Institute for Global Public Health
Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine
Dr. Listy Thomas
In emergency rooms and urgent care centers, physicians must draw upon an array of expertise. Beyond physical exam skills, they must employ patient-centered communication skills to arrive at an accurate diagnosis. This is something that Professor Listy Thomas, an emergency physician and Assistant Director of the Clinical Arts and Sciences course, knows very well, and it's something she instills in all of her students.
“We’ve been moving away from the physician-centric interview for a little while now, but in practice, it’s still something people fall back on,” Thomas said. “That’s something we address in my course.”
The course teaches a mix of hard clinical and interpersonal skills and emphasizes small group learning in a hands-on environment, matching about 8 students with a single faculty member. “We do a lot of faculty development to make sure that preceptors and students are on the same page,” Thomas said.
When she isn’t expanding the toolsets of future physicians, Professor Thomas dons the role of academic career adviser, working closely with third- and fourth-year med students to match them to the right specialty during and after residency. “It’s a year-long process of growth,” Thomas explained. “It takes a lot of mentoring.”
This process consists of more than just skills assessments and one-on-one meetings. Thomas and other faculty review students’ personality tests, gauge their career outlooks and personal goals, review their strengths and their actual performance during their clinical rotations.
“Students come to us younger and younger now, and they come in with aspirations,” Thomas said. “We try to match those expectations and ideals with reality to find what and where they will be most successful and happy.”
The academic catalog is a resource and reference guide that outlines the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine's curriculum, requirements, standards, student code of conduct and university policies.
View our calendar for the academic year, including important milestones like examination dates, university holidays, Match Day and Commencement.
As you graduate from the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, you will be ready to distinguish yourself in hospitals, clinics and medical centers across the U.S. Our most recent graduates are headed to a variety of prestigious residency programs coast to coast, including those located at Yale University, The Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina and the University of California-San Francisco. In keeping with our mission, 12 percent are entering family medicine, which exceeds the national average of 7 percent.
Like your predecessors, you’ll possess the skills and instincts to interview, diagnose, conduct research and perform at the highest level and under the most stressful circumstances. This is made possible through early clinical exposure in the Medical Student Home Program, an award-winning national network of partnerships and affiliated institutions, and four years of student advising designed to match your temperament, skills and goals to the right medical specialty. It is made possible by your own dedication and sacrifice.
Our faculty are award-winning physicians with decades of practice experience in multiple specialties, as well as passionate educators who have taught in numerous universities, hospitals and other institutions. They have received prestigious fellowships, served as chaired members in international societies and even host nationally syndicated radio shows.
Both clinicians and scholars, our professors contribute to the advancement of medicine through groundbreaking medical research and regularly publish their work in trade journals and magazines.
Our faculty members contribute to the advancement of medicine through groundbreaking research in subjects as diverse as renal disease, veterans’ health issues, public health community program planning and cannabis pharmacology.
Associate Professor Carolyn Macica's research on metabolic bone disorders, namely the most common form of familial childhood rickets — X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH) — led to the creation of Quinnipiac’s XLH Day program, a patient advocacy event and symposium held at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine.
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