The four-year curriculum leading to the degree of Doctor of Medicine, or M.D., at UCLA prepares students for research, practice and teaching careers. Traditional teaching combined with problem-based learning and laboratory practice is only one phase in a physician's education at UCLA. The curriculum is based on these phases: Curriculum Phase I Human Biology and Disease, Curriculum Phase II Core Clinical Clerkships and Curriculum Phase III 4th Year Colleges. Medical school instruction includes lectures, seminars, laboratory sessions, demonstrations and tutorials, with visits to physician offices or hospitals. The M.D. Degree program exposes students to patients in their first week well into graduation.
Post-M.D. Graduate Programs offer courses in Subspecialty Training and Advanced Research and Master of Science in Clinical Research. These postgraduate programs, including residencies, are offered in combination with affiliated hospitals such as Cedars-Sinai and West Los Angeles VA Medical Centers, as well as many others. These extensive clinical facilities can broaden the horizons of medical students and further their education in a tactile atmosphere. The individual clinical departments of the School of Medicine or the affiliated hospitals can provide more specialized information on each specific course including the Specialized Training and Advanced Research, or STAR, fellowship program for physician-scientists, and the Institute for Molecular Medicine.
The umbrella program represents 11 Ph.D. Degree Programs, to include: Neuroscience, Neurobiology, Biomedical Physics, Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Biomathematics, Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology and Molecular Toxicology. Students are given the ability to make a solid decision on their topic of thesis research in the first year of course work and laboratory rotations -- then transition into one of the 11 degree-granting Ph.D. degree programs are available. The Ph.D. curriculum is primarily laboratory research rotations and coursework.
The STAR program offers the ability to combine clinical fellowship training with advanced research to complete a Ph.D. or Master of Science degree. Clinical training in the STAR program is offered in cardiology, digestive diseases, infectious diseases, nephrology, pediatrics, pathology, surgical disciplines and many more. Research training is usually three to four years, with salary support. Beginning with 12 to 24 months of clinical fellowship training, this program then moves into research training in one of four career tracks: Basic Science to a Ph.D. degree in any Department in the Life Sciences of UCLA, School of Engineering or California Institute of Technology; Health Service to a Ph.D. degree from the School of Public Health or from Rand Graduate School; Clinical Research to a Master of Science in Clinical Research from the Department of Biomathematics in the School of Medicine; and lastly, a Post-Doctoral Research Training in a two to three year post-doctoral program for students who entered STAR with a combined M.D./Ph.D. degree program.