Arizona's three-year medical curriculum: a postmortem

The College of Medicine at the University of Arizona was among many medical schools instituting a course of study leading to graduation in three years. Students and faculty found the three-year program to be an unsatisfactory educational experience. Among the major problems were excessive intensity of classroom work, insufficient vacation time, and inadequate time to teach important basic science material. Objective measures of student performance demonstrated no differences between graduates of the new program and students graduating from a traditional four-year curriculum. A process of curriculum review involving students, faculty, and administrators ultimately resulted in several curricular improvements and establishment of a new four-year program.