Flexner 3.0—Democratization of Medical Knowledge for the 21st Century: Teaching Medical Science Using K-12 General Pathology as a Gateway Course

A medical school general pathology course has been reformatted into a K-12 general pathology course. This new course has been implemented at a series of 7 to 12 grade levels and the student outcomes compared. Typically, topics covered mirrored those in a medical school general pathology course serving as an introduction to the mechanisms of diseases. Assessment of student performance was based on their score on a multiple-choice final examination modeled after an examination given to medical students. Two Tucson area schools, in a charter school network, participated in the study. Statistical analysis of examination performances showed that there were no significant differences as a function of school (F = 0.258, P = .6128), with students at school A having an average test scores of 87.03 (standard deviation = 8.99) and school B 86.00 (standard deviation = 8.18; F = 0.258, P = .6128). Analysis of variance was also conducted on the test scores as a function of gender and class grade. There were no significant differences as a function of gender (F = 0.608, P = .4382), with females having an average score of 87.18 (standard deviation = 7.24) and males 85.61 (standard deviation = 9.85). There were also no significant differences as a function of grade level (F = 0.627, P = .6003), with 7th graders having an average of 85.10 (standard deviation = 8.90), 8th graders 86.00 (standard deviation = 9.95), 9th graders 89.67 (standard deviation = 5.52), and 12th graders 86.90 (standard deviation = 7.52). The results demonstrated that middle and upper school students performed equally well in K-12 general pathology. Student course evaluations showed that the course met the student’s expectations. One class voted K-12 general pathology their “elective course-of-the-year.”