The Warren Alpert Medical School in conjunction with its partner institutions (The University of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, and Salve Regina University), provides a robust interprofessional education experience for all students.  First and second-year medical students participate in two interprofessional workshops with nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and social work students.  These workshops focus on important topics in medicine, such as access to care and the social determinants of health, with an additional emphasis on learning interprofessional skills such as communication and teamwork in the health professions. 

In addition, students work interprofessionally in clinic sites, such as at the Rhode Island Free Clinic, where medical students across all four years, work side by side with nursing and pharmacy students, in providing care to patients. Furthermore, other electives, such as the Rhode Island Medical Navigation Partnership, allow students to learn in the classroom together about important areas of medicine, such as housing insecurity, and then help a patient navigate through the health care system together. The Medical School is committed to continuing to develop additional opportunities, such as these, to enrich our students' interprofessional education.

The Warren Alpert Medical School has developed an integrated, longitudinal hands-on ultrasound curriculum for all students in pre-clerkship and curriculum phase.  Students begin their ultrasound training in their first semester of medical school, with an introductory module on ultrasound knobology, followed by additional, hands-on sessions supplemented with modules that are integrated with course content throughout the remainder of their pre-clerkship curriculum. As part of an updated curriculum that is being implemented for the graduating MD class of 2028, additional longitudinal sessions are being developed for the clerkship year, with assessment of ultrasound skills planned for the end of the clerkship year. Students also have the opportunity to take a clinical year ultrasound elective in Internal Medicine or Emergency Medicine during their clerkship and post-clerkship phases.  

The Integrated Clinical Curriculum (ICC) was instituted with curricular changes that started in 2024. A major focus of our curriculum redesign is authentic integration of foundational medical knowledge across the four-year curriculum. The goal of ICC is to establish a longitudinal curriculum which integrates foundational medical knowledge from basic science, clinical science, and health systems science (HSS) through a case-base scenario and developing patient care plans.

Currently, the format of ICC cases includes: pre-reading material from existing IMS, Doctoring & HSS courses and practice multiple-choice questions; an in-class session consisting of student lead team-based learning (TBL) questions in small groups followed by a faculty-guided clinical case; and a post-session guided reflection with clinical reasoning prompts and additional multiple-choice questions.