UAB Heersink School of Medicine

Students spend their first two years in Birmingham. Emily Hayward, an MD-PhD student, describes Introduction to Clinical Medicine, a two-year course that splits the class into groups of six with one physician preceptor and teaches each physical exam alongside its organ module.

Learning the heart exam while studying cardiology, Emily says, made the classroom material click far better than a single crash course before the wards would have.

After the preclinical years, students train at one of four campuses: Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, or Tuscaloosa, home of the Primary Care Track. Regional hospitals include Huntsville Hospital, Baptist Medical Centers South and East in Montgomery, and DCH Regional Medical Center.

The Birmingham campus sits beside UAB Hospital, the Kirklin Clinic, and Children's of Alabama, and the program also offers a Rural Medicine pathway.

Birmingham sites include UAB Hospital, Children's of Alabama, the Birmingham VA Medical Center, and Callahan Eye Hospital.

Service starts immediately. At Equal Access Birmingham, the student-run free clinic, Emily was taking blood pressures and interviewing patients within the first two weeks of medical school.

Emily calls living in Birmingham one of the best parts of UAB: the resources of a major academic center with affordable, quiet neighborhoods minutes from campus. Several classmates in Emily's MD-PhD program bought houses within 15 minutes of school.

The trade-off, some peers say, is fewer concerts and events than a bigger city, and limited housing within walking distance of campus.