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Have you considered that medical schools may not want everyone to go into specialties that require a hard science background?
And, this isn't a question of competence. It's about taking the path of more resistance to increase your competence beyond what's required so that you can be the best physician you can be.
Like it or not, when we start to practice you'll see things like academic prestige and pecking orders based on who went to top 20 schools. I don't know about you, but I didn't go to Stanford for undergrad, and I certainly won't be at Johns Hopkins for medical school. And that's fine by me. What we can do, however, is choose how well to educate ourselves, and maximize our time spent doing so in order to hit HMO's, nursing unions that want our practices, giblet head human resources and administration where it hurts. Life is ruthless, and you'd better be prepared for the real world.
And which specialties don't require a hard science background? Are you differentiating between specialties that are more research oriented and those that aren't? Fair enough, though let's not pretend there are specialties that don't require hard science. Some simply have more opportunity to put all that pre-clinical science coursework to use. And then, of course, there are those that simply have you do research to jump through more hoops because they're more competitive. Don't pretend that anesthesiology and derm would be as research oriented if they were as popular as PM&R.
Re: the whole "be prepared for the real world," what you're saying is, "bust ass." I recall a certain someone saying that in their post recently. Might've been a certain non-trad who got **** done despite his predominantly fluffy humanities background. One might say he took a path of more resistance to get that acceptance. And despite the school I was accepted to having a huge primary care focus, I flat out told them that it was very unlikely I would go into primary care. Sometimes it is a matter of competence and intellectual agility. You yourself said so here:
Words...
For this thread, here, what I'm saying is that "rigor" is what you and I might call "hard thinking," and because of this, majoring in less rigorous subjects will not give you an academic experience that will as effectively prepare your brain for clinical decision making as a hard science major will.
And pretty much this entire post:
Without good quantitative skills and scientific problem solving ability, a nurse is arguably more qualified to do your job.
Nurses (BSN) go through basic science prerequisites just like doctors do; nurses take 2-3 years of additional science/clinical specific coursework; advanced practice nurses then take 2 years of additional science/clinical specific coursework. Typically, advanced practice nurses also spend some time in the field between their baccalaureate degree and their graduate training, similar to a residency.
And nurses still aren't able to prescribe anything.
You're telling me that someone who majored in history is doing their self a favor by skipping 2 years of science-based coursework? Sorry, but rotations as a medical student aren't the same as training geared towards your specialty, and because of this, masters level advanced practice nurses are further ahead (in certain ways) than your average primary care history major doc.
You don't have to agree with me, but if you want to be the best and most competent doctor that you can be, you should have a strong science background; if you don't, you're doing yourself a disservice. I'm not saying that it will be totally detrimental to your career to major in anthropology, but at the same time, it won't help you -- clinically -- in the way that a hard science degree will.
Citation needed here:
Stuff...
Long story short, physical chemistry is like the whole foods hot bar for your brain, and soft sciences/liberal arts are somewhere in the international canned food aisle. I'm shocked and amazed that the 2015 MCAT will have humanities, sociology, and psychology on it. When people start majoring in that garbage we'll have a spike in medication errors and irresponsible prescriptive decision making more so than we already do. My former mentor (a PhD holder in Chemistry from UCD) died from an adverse drug reaction due to some of this... I was in nursing, before, and you wouldn't believe some of the crap I've seen. In fact, part of the reason why I'm doing a Pharmacology masters is to become more competent and responsible for my future patients. I'm done ranting.
Also, sorry about your mentor, but are you saying he died due to wrongful administration of the medication, either due to interaction with another medication, or a known allergy, or perhaps the medication wasn't clinically indicated? Or that he simply had an adverse reaction that he never previously had? The former cases are actually errors, the latter case is bad luck.
And did the doctor administering the medication have a non-science background (hard to believe since he had to have gone through med school and passed the boards) that precluded him from having the necessary competence to administer the medication properly, or maybe not administer is at all?
I think that pchem should be required. It's helped me understand pharmacology since ligand-receptor interactions are analogous to reactants in a solution doing whatever it is that they do. Thermodynamics (what can happen) and kinetics (how fast it happens) are important for my thesis on cardiac drug interactions, as well (I'm doing a masters in Pharmacology and Toxicology). I probably want to become an anesthesiologist where I'll use physical chemistry, too. So, in my biased opinion, pchem should be required.
If you're curious, though, I've been involved with pchem for the last few weeks... I've been arranging to use the UC Intercampus Exchange http://gradstudies.ucdavis.edu/forms/GS306_IntercampusExchangeApp.pdf
to take a graduate course on kinetics (physical chemistry) over at UC Berkeley next year; UC Davis' chemistry curriculum is not as strong as I'd like it to be. For example, I went to UCLA for undergrad, and they had Pchem 1 (Thermodynamics), Pchem 2 (Kinetics), Pchem 3 (Quantum Mechanics), and a course on spectroscopy. At UC Davis they have watered these courses down so that you take a low math prereq clearance quantum mechanics first (you should have formal multivariable calc and preferably DE for a real quantum mechanics course), then they require an intermediate course on molecular properties and spectroscopy, and finally you are able to take a combined thermodynamics and kinetics course. And if you're really interested in chemistry at Davis, you can take "advanced" physical chemistry with another combined thermodynamics/kinetics course. At the graduate level, they don't even offer a formal course on kinetics.
These are things I learned in an undergrad biochem course. And they will also appear on the new MCAT if that makes you happy and if my practice section was any indication. PChem sounds like it would be overkill unless you intend to do basic science research, which the goal of the aforementioned programs at Stanford and Harvard. Harvard also has a regular MD track for us plebs not really interested in basic research. I won't discourage you from doing PChem because I always think intellectual curiosity is a good thing, but I think you'll be disappointed at how relevant to clinical practice the things you'll learn in that course actually are, except for maybe anesthesiology, which you earlier indicated an interest in. I think QofQuimica, who has a PhD in organic chemistry, can probably give you a better idea of how relevant her hard science background actually is to clinical practice. My impression from prior posts is that it isn't particularly relevant. Maybe I'm wrong, but everything I've heard from physicians does not quite jibe with your line of thinking.