MD Program
Student experience:
Renewed curriculum
Listen to our students explain what it's like to study the most up-to-date medical education curriculum in Canada.
Interprofessional Education
The health-related programs at Dalhousie University are committed to providing their students with a wide-range of interprofessional experiences and opportunities. Many of these activities are centered around the state-of-the art Collaborative Health Education Building, which provides students with an opportunity to learn in an environment that more accurately reflects real world health-care practice.
The most up-to-date curriculum in Canada
Our MD program gives you hands-on learning opportunities starting in your first week of medical school.
Med 1 & 2 (pre-clerkship years)
For the first two years of medical school (Med 1 and Med 2), you're based either out of Halifax or Saint John. The pre-clerkship years offer a basic foundation in anatomy and systems of the human body, as well as the philosophical and ethical aspects of medicine.
There’s structured lectures, labs and tutorials, and there’s also scheduled time for the Research in Medicine program, electives and self directed learning. You'll work closely with faculty, volunteer patients and simulated patients. And at the end of Med 1, you'll spend a week working alongside rural physicians in communities across the Maritimes. Over the summer months, you may apply for summer electives.
Med 3 & 4 (clerkship years)
Clerkship, completed over two academic years (Med 3 and Med 4), offers you more opportunity to apply your learning in a variety of clinical settings and across a variety of medical specialties. You'll have the opportunity to meet faculty in our teaching hospitals, gain mentors and explore residency training programs.
Clerkships take place in our teaching sites across the Maritimes, with opportunities to travel across Canada and internationally.
Research in Medicine (RIM)
The RIM Unit is a 3-year longitudinal program, beginning in September of first year with completion in September of fourth year. Research is built around an intensive summer studentship, typically in students’ first year and conducted under the supervision of a faculty mentor.
RIM is designed to instill a high level of critical thinking and create a culture of inquiry among our learners. At the end of their undergraduate medical training, students should see themselves no longer as consumers of knowledge but as professionals with responsibility to generate knowledge to advance their profession.
Our educational outcomes in medical education
Our graduates will integrate their knowledge, skills and attitudes for competence in four principal and interdependent areas of achievement: as professionals, as community contributors, as life-long learners, and as skilled clinicians.
Want to learn more?
Explore our undergraduate curriculum map more in depth by accessing our mapping software, CBlue (Dal login required)