Improving Medical Students' Application of Knowledge and Clinical Decision-Making Through a Porcine-Based Integrated Cardiac Basic Science Program.

Objective: Despite the concerted effort of modern undergraduate curriculum designers, the ability to integrate basic sciences in clinical rotations is an ongoing problem in medical education. Students and newly qualified doctors themselves report worry about the effect this has on their clinical performance. There are examples in the literature to support development of attempts at integrating such aspects, but this "vertical integration" has proven to be difficult.