Walk us through a typical week in the pre-clinical curriculum. Roughly how much is lecture, small group, lab, and self-study?
In preclinicals, there are typically lectures in the morning broken into 50 minute blocks with ten minute breaks, up to 4 in a morning starting at 8AM. Afternoons are typically free or scheduled as labs, physical exam sessions, or small group learning sessions. All lectures are recorded. Thursday lectures are all remote/virtual/asynchronous to give you time to prepare for a quiz on Friday morning. Exams are every 4-6 weeks with 2 exams (midterm and final) during 8 week blocks and only a final during shorter 6 week blocks.
How are the preclinical years graded (pass/fail, tiers, internal ranking, etc.)? Do you think this has a major impact on the student culture at your school?
All preclinical blocks are pass/fail but there is a distinction offered for students who score 88% or higher for their final block score. These distinctions will appear on the MSPE but no other ranking is used for preclinical years. The MSPE does have tiers of recommendation determined holistically by the deans office (recommend, recommend with confidence, highly recommend, highest recommendations)
Briefly describe the main hospitals and clinics you work at and what sort of patient population you see at each. Has one of these clinical sites or clinics been particularly rewarding or influential for you? We want to know about experiences that might be unique to your medical school.
Loma Linda partners with the VA system, RUHS County Medical Center, and the SAC FQHC clinics as well as a wide variety of other outpatient facilities. San Bernardino is a largely underserved population especially at the county hospital or the SAC clinics.
RUHS is the safety net county medical center, and thus the patient population tends to be more underserved patients with poor medical access and untreated or poorly managed chronic conditions. This same population is also present at Loma Linda, but due to Loma Linda being the larger and more capable institution, the main medical center has more specialist support and higher exposure to rare or complex cases that get transferred in. The VA cares for the veteran population, which is its own population that is difficult to describe but commonly suffers from occupational exposures, PTSD, or maladaptive psychiatric coping. I enjoyed my time at each of these institutions, and the intentional exposure to each of these "flavors" is an advantage of coming to medical school here.
During clinical rotations, were you happy with how directly involved you were in patient care and your value on the team? What did you think about the balance between autonomy and guidance/teaching during your rotations? This is going to differ for every rotation and team you are a part of, so feel free to give examples you feel are representative.
It definitely differs based on the team and rotation, but I think at most places if you want to take initiative to do more and prove yourself capable you can take on more responsibility for learning opportunities. One IM attending said “If you show me you can practice medicine, I will reward you by letting you practice medicine.”
For an applicant who wants a career in global health, what makes this school a good or a poor choice?
Loma Linda has a long and rich history of global health initiatives including summer trips in preclinical years and mission electives in fourth year. They partner with the network of SDA mission hospitals globally in places like China, Africa, South America, and others.
The school trips largely partner with the SDA mission hospitals, so the experience is not terribly unlike shadowing or volunteering in the hospital here in the United States, commensurate with student year level. These hospitals provide, for the mission field, a relatively high standard of care. However, mission work inherently works under resource limitations and very limited specialist support or capability for complex procedures. Often, the work involves much more patient education and lifestyle interventions, as heroic medical treatments are simply not possible.
Are there chances to work with underserved populations? If so, describe the population you work with, the experience itself, and how it contributes to your medical training.
Loma Linda is the largest medical center in the Inland Empire and even extending north and east to the Central Valley and rural areas. This means that besides the local underserved populations in San Bernardino we see a lot of zebra cases from an impressively wide geographic distribution. The likelihood of seeing rare conditions is much higher here compared to many other places.
How responsive is the administration to student feedback? Give an example of something that is currently being discussed, was recently changed, or did not change after students spoke up.
The administration is constantly making changes to the curriculum based on student feedback, such as amending the anatomy curriculum to provide opportunities for formative assessment and inviting fourth years to help facilitate case based learning sessions for preclinical students. Most major committees on campus have student representatives.
How does specialty and career advising work? Who advised you, and how useful was it?
As an Internal Medicine applicant, advising was arranged through the clerkship and residency program administration pairing small groups of students with faculty to provide an avenue for application and personal statement review, mock interviews, and another layer of prompting letter writers to submit to ERAS.
For my advising, the Internal Medicine clerkship coordinators hosted workshops on personal statement writing and best practices, interview strategy, and a resident panel, and shared data regarding where prior classes of IM applicants had successfully matched. The faculty mentor assigned to me also looked over my personal statement and activities, and gave me an opportunity for a mock interview. Overall, this support has been incredibly valuable for me, especially when my advisor chased down a letter writer who waited until the last week to submit his LOR to ERAS! The advisors and coordinators are incredibly open to questions or requests for additional help if students want more in-depth help with any aspect of the application cycle.