Medical Doctors not taking Hard Science Classes

[adnelson60087]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/nyregion/30medschools.html?src=me&ref=general

For generations of pre-med students, three things have been as certain as death and taxes: organic chemistry, physics and the Medical College Admission Test, known by its dread-inducing acronym, the MCAT.

So it came as a total shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered, through a singer in her favorite a cappella group at Brown University, that one of the nation’s top medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements.

Until then, despite being the daughter of a physician, she said, “I was kind of thinking medical school was not the right track for me.”

Ms. Adler became one of the lucky few in one of the best kept secrets in the cutthroat world of medical school admissions, the Humanities and Medicine Program at the Mount Sinai medical school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

The program promises slots to about 35 undergraduates a year if they study humanities or social sciences instead of the traditional pre-medical school curriculum and maintain a 3.5 grade-point average.

Among the current crop is Ms. Adler, 21, a senior at Brown studying global political economy and majoring in development studies.

Ms. Adler said she was inspired by her freshman study abroad in Africa. “I didn’t want to waste a class on physics, or waste a class on orgo,” she said. “The social determinants of health are so much more pervasive than the immediate biology of it.”

She added that her parents, however, were “thrilled when I decided to go the M.D. route, because they were worried about my job security.”

__________________________________________


There is no way in hell I'd want this person as my physician. "Waste a class on physics"...Is this the kind of thinking that is going to make America better? Really??

[valerief]

1. Wonder how many of the in-lieu-of-hard-science classes are actually

theology-based (but with a sociologically sounding name).

[RaleighNCDUer]

What has physics to do with physiology? nt

[Catshrink]

3. Or organic chemistry to do with pharmacology.

(You weren't serious, were you?)

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Outrageous!

You're last comment says everything that I was going to say.

[jtuck004]

4. I'm not so sure this is such a bad idea. The knee-jerk reaction

is that because they didn't jump through the hoops they just can't do the job, but there are plenty of people who made major contributions in another field despite not having the "basics" everyone thinks is necessary. Stanley Millgram got a degree in political science, had his application to the PhD psych program at Harvard rejected because of insufficient background, then went on to publish seminal work on authority.

And plenty of really bad, horrific, and scary examples of people who passed these classes then caused unimginable pain to others. The stuff they make whole news programs out of.

Although there are plenty of examples in medicine, there is a more recent and potentially destructive one. The quants on Wall Street, drawn from the top math and physics students and professors at schools such as MIT created hedge funds based on sophisticated statistical models trading complex mortgage derivatives, often without even an asset underlying the trade. Using leverage as high as 30 or 40 to 1, they created a market of over $160 trillion on a portion of the $13 trillion U.S. housing market.

When it came apart, based largely on the unknowns and bad assumptions in these models, it brought unemployment and underemployment for 30 million people, displaced millions of people from their homes, and has left the taxpayers of the country trillions of dollars in debt which will take at least a decade, and possibly longer to resolve. (No one outside the Federal Reserve knows the full extent, and their books are hidden from the taxpayer). All the while this debt will act as an anchor on our economy.

And these are some of the best math and physics minds in the country. But they never looked at the human consequenses or the fallability of their models.

I wonder if a little of the "humanities" might not have been helpful. As the author above says..."“The social determinants of health are so much more pervasive than the immediate biology of it.”

That is true on many levels.

[kestrel91316]

5. No need to throw the baby out with the bath water. So make pre-med students

take more humanities, perhaps a sociology prerequisite or two. But to eliminate basic science education in someone whose entire career is BASED ON SCIENCE is the worst sort of foolishness.

[jtuck004]

6. I do understand what you are saying, and

I would agree if it was all based on science. But dealing with people is frequently not, because of that whole "behavior" thing.

If it were science, the markets would be predictable. They never have been, and neither are people.

Besides, they are talking a small percentage, not a wholesale "toss the baby" approach. And I would take a money bet that most of those students make better grades in med school than some of those who passed all the hoop-jumping classes.

When I was a medic, like most medics, I suspect, I thought about med school. They have a standing joke in med school:

-----------
What do you call a doctor who makes solid D's on his tests in med school?

Doctor.
-------------

One other thing I came across - I was reading the Hippocratic oath one day, and the line "To teach medicine to the sons of my teacher." kind of jumped out. Turns out, as part of the oath, medical schools gave favorable treatment to children of pysicians. Not because they did well on their MCATS, but because of who their parents were. Frankly, I would rather have a doctor that was a good "learner" than one who became a doctor because of an accident of birth.

And based on the research I read in grad school about the success of people with humanities degrees in scientific fields, I will always thing this is a good idea. For at least a few.

[kestrel91316]

7. Hm. I doubt doctors are allowed to graduate from medical school

with "solid D's". When I was in vet school, a D was the same as an F. You had to retake the class/year. This was very rare - only about one student a year had to repeat the year. Solid D's wouldn't last more than 2 semesters - then they would be kicked OUT. Of course, because vet schools only admit the cream of the crop and not slackers, nobody ever got kicked out - no need, because we didn't have that sort of students.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. When I got my masters in education a B was the same as an F

You had to retake the class if you earned less than an A.

[knitter4democracy]

10. If they pass, they pass.

If they pass, they get a degree.

[adnelson60087]

9. That wasn't the author, that was the 21 year old kid.

This is just a bad idea. Medicine is a lot more matter-of-fact than economics ever could be, and Chemistry, Physics and Biology are the linchpins of this discipline. I agree there are other fields you can be successful at, without formal training, but medicine is not likely to be one of them. As for the need for doctors to be better trained in human relations, that is true of all sorts of professions, and again, I think they should be required to take more humanities such as sociology.

[w4rma]

11. Taking hard science courses isn't about "jumping through hoops". It's about having enough knowledge

about the real world to make hard life and death decisions every single day of your career.

And memorizing yourself through med school doesn't make a good doctor, either. In fact it's these rote memory types that usually make the big medical screw-ups.