The establishment of a new four year allopathic medical school in El Paso (Texas, USA) has provided an opportunity to develop a unique integrated organ based curriculum. This presentation describes this new curriculum and discusses the role of physiology as a core component in this curriculum development. Lessons learned in the current process can serve as a model to reevaluate the teaching of physiology in Germany. The first two years of this curriculum are devoted to basic science delivery in the context of clinical presentations and is based on a model originally developed and proofed at "The University of Calgary Medical School".

The curriculum presents 120 separate clinical presentations (divided into nine "Units") based on the symptoms of a patient seeking medical attention. Each clinical presentation is illustrated by a "scheme" which represents the expert physicians approach to diagnose the patient's complaint. A "scheme" is a flow chart which illustrates the decision making process that an expert physician would use to analyzes a patients complaint. Inductive reasoning directs the medical student through the scheme.

Following scheme presentation, faculty members present the basic science needed to understand the decisions made at the branch points of the scheme.

Each week, "work case examples" are presented to highlight the importance of the basic science needed to solve clinical and patient related complaints. An accompanying "master's colloquium" addresses general questions relevant to professionalism, controversies, ethics, critical thinking skills and evidence based medicine. A simulation center will provide several hours of medical skills training each week. In addition, a "Society, Community and Individual" course will confront students with actual problems seen daily in the delivery of medical care.

The current faculty consists of 15 PhD basic scientist (three physiologists) representing the traditional disciplines and 4 MD clinical medical educators. Physiology represents 16% of the contact time (125 hours of physiology and 60 hours neurophysiology). This emphasis on non-neural physiology is 37% higher than the national average (Chairs of Physiology report (2006). Sixty hours of neurophysiology will be presented as compared to a national average of 9 hours.

Overall, physiology plays a vital role in the development and presentation of this highly integrated curriculum. Data available from the Calgary Medical School suggest this curriculum improves the retention of medical knowledge by students, making it a model which should be seriously considered as a method to teach medical students in Germany.