When the Charlotte campus of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine holds its first classes this week, it marks more than the arrival of the city’s first four-year medical school.
It also brings to North Carolina a novel approach to training doctors — one that ditches the traditional cadaver lab and old-school lectures in favor of virtual dissection, lifelike robots and a new curriculum built around medical problem-solving.
“We are taking a new approach to medical training here in Charlotte,” said Dr. Roy Strowd III, vice dean for undergraduate medical education. “We’re doing it in a new and forward-thinking way.”
Here are some of the nontraditional approaches the school will use in training its first class of 49 students:
- High-tech robots: Students will practice their skills on high-fidelity “manikins” (computerized patient dummies) that can breathe, cough, talk and go into cardiac arrest. The school has manikins that represent patients of all ages, even premature babies born at 27 weeks. Instructors can watch student interactions from behind a two-way mirror in mock exam rooms.
- Digital anatomy lab: Instead of taking anatomy in a traditional cadaver lab, students will explore the human body virtually using touchscreens that let them zoom in, rotate and peel back layers of the human body with a tap and a swipe. Another lab features plastinated body parts made from human tissue.
- Problem-based learning: A curriculum developed for the school is centered on real-life clinical scenarios instead of traditional lectures, Strowd said. Students will build their understanding of anatomy, physiology and disease as they work together to solve medical problems. “From day one, students will be presented with a problem, and they will work the case just like a physician,” Strowd said.
- Immediate patient contact: Students will see patients at Atrium Health’s Carolinas Medical Center “on their very first day,” said Tony Dang, an internal medicine physician and assistant professor of internal medicine. It’s part of the program’s focus on early hands-on experience and patient-centered care, he said.
The new medical school is the centerpiece of The Pearl, a $1.5 billion medical innovation district spearheaded by Atrium Health and Wexford Science & Technology and supported by $75 million in public incentives.
Designed to spark collaboration among academics, researchers and biomedical companies, The Pearl will house programs to train nurses and other health care professionals, as well as the North American headquarters of surgical training center IRCAD and other large medical tech companies.
Future phases of The Pearl call for a hotel and conference center, apartments and ground-level retail.
A shift away from cadaver labs
The campus joins a small but growing number of schools nationwide that have moved away from traditional cadaver labs — a shift driven by cost, safety and ethical concerns, said Lisa Howley, senior director for transforming medical education for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“There are the ongoing challenges of cost, of procuring the specimens and the facilities to house them,” she said. “Those challenges have always been there. It's just that now that we have technologies that are so much better, they can support that type of teaching and learning.”
A randomized controlled trial published in the journal Nature in July 2024 found that students in South Korea who learned anatomy using virtual platforms performed better on anatomy quizzes and demonstrated a better understanding of concepts compared with those who trained exclusively with cadavers.
Likewise, a 2022 study conducted at the UNC School of Medicine found similar benefits among students who trained in a virtual dissection lab. “In fact, there was not a single instance noted where in-person curriculum produced higher mean examination scores than virtual or hybridized models,” the researchers wrote.
In medical journals and articles, however, some physicians argue that working with cadavers is a vital part of medical education.
The other medical school campuses in North Carolina still have traditional cadaver labs, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Alan Wolf, a spokesman for the UNC School of Medicine, said UNC faculty believe traditional cadaver dissection is “the best preparation for clinical training.”
“There are benefits of teamwork, there is a ‘first patient’ experience with a cadaver, and students appreciate learning about texture, three dimensionality, normal anatomic variation, and pathology,” he said.
Tafline Arbor, anatomy discipline director for the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said the Charlotte students will still spend time in the cadaver lab on the Winston-Salem campus.
She emphasized that virtual dissection makes learning anatomy more interactive and engaging.
“These tools allow students to build a three-dimensional model of the human body in their minds,” she said during a recent tour of the Charlotte campus. “It’s about integrating anatomy with imaging and clinical content in a way traditional dissection can’t match.”
Fresh eyes, unique perspectives
The Charlotte campus’s training model builds on ideas already in use at other medical schools, said Howley and Belinda Chen, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine who helps develop curricula for medical education.
For example, almost all medical schools use robotic manikins and simulations because they offer a safe way for students to learn.
“It lets them do high-risk, low-frequency procedures safely,” Chen said.
Many schools also include some problem-based learning to help students connect science to clinical practice in a meaningful way, Chen and Howley said. However, it’s usually in conjunction with other teaching methods, they said.
As for the early encounters with patients, research supports getting students involved with patients sooner rather than later, Howley said. It helps students see how complex, team-based and patient-focused modern medicine really is.
It’s also valuable for health care systems, she said: “What we’ve found is that those early medical learners have very fresh eyes and unique perspectives. They can see things and notice things that others may not, and be advocates for better health care.”
The medical students: One-third from NC, racial diversity data unclear
Students who make up the Charlotte campus’s inaugural four-year class are from 18 states and 29 colleges, with a third coming from North Carolina, according to school officials. The average student age is 24.
When asked about the racial and ethnic makeup of the class during a media tour on July 9, Strowd said the information wasn’t yet available. He said, “Equity and diversity — and really thinking about bringing all groups of students together — is a priority for the school and has been for many years.”
Atrium has said the school seeks to produce medical professionals representative of the communities it serves.
The Charlotte students join about 150 more first-year students training on Wake Forest’s Winston-Salem campus. Enrollment in Charlotte is expected to grow from 49 to 100 students per class over the next five years.
Historically, about a third of the doctors who graduate from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine stay in North Carolina after graduation, according to school officials.
Training in his hometown
Rei Rama of Charlotte, a first-year student, said he first heard about Wake Forest’s plans to build a medical school in the city years ago, when he picked up a flyer about it during a visit to the Winston-Salem campus.
At the time, he said, it seemed like a distant possibility.
After graduating from UNC Charlotte in 2023, Rama worked as a medical assistant before deciding to follow in his father’s footsteps and apply to medical school.
Rama said he chose Charlotte over other schools because he liked its problem-based curriculum and emphasis on small-group learning, which he said helps students “learn how to think as physicians early on.”
He said he’s also excited to be part of the innovation district and to be able to train in his hometown.
“Living in Charlotte, you think that when you go to medical school, you have to move,” he said. “But being able to serve the same community that I grew up in here in the States, that’s amazing.”
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