College of Medicine : Clinical Undergraduate Medical Education Years III & IV

The goal of the third and fourth years of the curriculum at The University of Toledo College of Medicine is to prepare students for the world of graduate medical education, which a student enters immediately upon graduation from medical school.

The wide spectrum of training programs that our students enter upon graduation and the high success rate that our students have in obtaining their choices for graduate training sites are a direct product of the training they receive in their third and fourth year clinical clerkships.

In addition to the required clerkships in the third year curriculum, students in their fourth year of medical school will have an opportunity for a broad spectrum of choices of elective clerkships.

Students are required to complete 28 weeks of Elective Clerkships. 12 weeks of the Elective Clerkships must be at the The University of Toledo and its associate teaching institutions. Four weeks of the Elective Clerkships must be an Acting Internship.  In addition, a four-week basic science selective is required. The basic science selective is an opportunity for students to revisit their basic sciences having had exposure to clinical medicine. This is an opportunity for students to solidify and re-integrate basic science into their clinical world.

The remainder of the fourth year of medical school electives can be completed at any medical school in the United States or Canada with the approval of a sponsoring department at The University of Toledo. In addition, students can participate in international clerkships if they are approved by a sponsoring department at The University of Toledo's College of Medicine. This flexibility in the fourth year of the curriculum allows students to have a unique opportunity to tailor their curriculum to their own future medical education and practice needs. We at The University of Toledo believe that this flexibility in our fourth year allows every student to have a unique and self-satisfying curriculum.

During the third and fourth years of medical school, each student is required to complete eight weeks of clinical experience in the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) of The University of Toledo. This unique clinical environment allows students to participate in clerkships both required and elective in our regional communities. The major advantage of these experiences is to place students in smaller communities in a one-on-one structured relationship with physicians who are practicing in the community. Students find this experience most rewarding since they have a unique opportunity to spend at good deal of time with the preceptor and to have a sense of day-to-day medical practice issues away from the academic medical center.