Spring 2012 Registration is Open! 

Welcome! For the 15th consecutive year, Georgetown University Medical Center and Georgetown University Hospital will jointly sponsor Mini-Medical School.

The program pulls practical and applicable lessons from medical school courses. For example, Thomas Sherman, associate professor in the physiology and biophysics department, presented a class on obesity to explain biochemistry.

Dr. Herbert Herscowitz co-directs the Mini-Medical School with Dr. Carlos Suarez-Quian, professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology. Georgetown has offered the eight-week program to members of the metro Washington community for the past 15 years. Upon completion, Mini-Med students receive a certificate as a “Doctor of Mini-Medicine.”

Each year, the program attracts a wide variety of students. Some have earned advanced degrees and work as lawyers, dentists and pharmacists while others are exploring the possibility of a future in medicine.

Ahmed, a work-up coordinator at Georgetown’s Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program, plans to apply for medical school in the next year or two. He signed up “to get a generalized knowledge of the different branches of medicine,” he says.

Meanwhile, Harvey, a certified senior adviser and patient advocate at D.C.-based Patient Navigator, says she enrolled in the Mini-Medical School with a goal to strengthen her knowledge of the basic tenets of medicine.

She and her boss, Elisabeth Schuler Russell (G’84) decided to take the classes for similar reasons.

“In my job as a patient navigator, one of the most important things I do is to help people understand their diagnosis, learn how to research their disease and teach them the vocabulary of their illness,” explains Schuler Russell, president of Patient Navigator.

She believes the program is helping her become more conversant in the language of medicine. “Medical practitioners tend to dismiss folks who don’t speak their language, so I’m hoping to be able to hold my own better in these interactions,” she adds.