The Challenges of Teaching Physiology in the “New” Medical Curriculum

What’s new about the “new” medical curriculum? (1) Discipline-based courses are being replaced by integrated organ system courses. (2) The preclinical curriculum, which for many years occupied the first two years of the medical curriculum, is being reduced in duration. In some medical schools it now lasts only one year. (3) The first-year curriculum now includes many “clinical” courses and experiences as well as medical ethics etc. The integrated curriculum poses two problems. (1) The learning of physiology is fragmented making it difficult for students to see the relationships between systems. (2) The imposed sequence of physiology topics may hinder student learning. The reduction in available time either means students are expected to learn less or they must learn the same amount but in a compressed time. The widespread presence of clinical courses in the first year, while it may have many benefits, nevertheless results in serious competition for student attention. The consequences of these challenges are that physiology teachers report it is harder to teach physiology and harder for students to gain an understanding of the functioning of the human body. Anecdotal reports suggest that students are learning less and understanding less. To the extent that these challenges are affecting student outcomes, physiology teachers need to develop new approaches to teaching that can meet these challenges. One possible approach is the adoption of a core concept focus in teaching physiology. This can help students develop a more integrated understanding across body systems, facilitates transfer of learning from block to block, and can reduce the need to teach everything. Finally, we need data about the consequences of the changing preclinical curriculum. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.