In which sequence? Does it matter?

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. A distinctive feature between the delivery of traditional preclinical and clinical curricula is that discipline-based clinical curriculum is delivered in a series of parallel clinical rotations for different groups of students, whereas the curriculum is synchronized across the cohort in preclinical years. Therefore, the sequence of learning themes or topics is more relevant to the preclinical years compared to clinical years in which the beginning and end points of the curriculum are different from one student to another. Many factors, both pedagogical and logistic, influence the optimal sequence of themes for the preclinical curriculum. During the process of reorganizing the sequence of themes for the preclinical curriculum at the University of Notre Dame Australia Fremantle, we identified a relative gap in literature on this topic. Given the importance of the sequence of themes for learning in the preclinical years, we were surprised to learn that publications on this topic are sparse. While sharing the challenges that we came across in our decision making process, we invite the scholars in this area to share their experience. This will undoubtedly benefit curriculum developers and educators in creating or reviewing the preclinical curriculum at their respective institutions.