the official "i hate my medical school" thread...

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hakksar said:
I think U of Colorado is different from most schools in the way it handles its early clinical experience. The fact that we have the same preceptor every week who gets to know us and become comfortable teaching us and allowing us to do things means that it is actually an opportunity to learn pathophys and clinical reasoning instead of just shadowing. I am not really sure how other schools do it but I know some of the others just have shadowing opportunities or precept with several different physicians. Also, I think the fact that the program is graduated with increasing responsibility as you go through the foundations program also allows it to be a good learning experience when others are not. This may be why you have such a different perspective than others on this board.
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Thnak you for this post. I am interviewing in March at Colorado (my state school) and was intially excited about the early clinical. Then I found this thread...Then I found you!
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Mateodaspy said:
i don't hate my medical school, but i was wondering if anyone out there hates theirs and, if so, why?
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Mateodaspy, is there NOTHING that irks you about your school? There must be if you started this thread, right?

Also, how much PBL does Harvard's curriculum actually have? And how much lecture? You don't have similar PBL complaints as the rest of the posters here? ...just wondering, thanks.
 
Does anyone here go to Loyola University Chicago or George Washington University? I'm trying to decide where to go...
 
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opstandzon said:
Does anyone here go to Loyola University Chicago or George Washington University? I'm trying to decide where to go...
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Just start a thread on the topic-you'll get a better response.
 
SeattlePostBach said:
Mateodaspy, is there NOTHING that irks you about your school? There must be if you started this thread, right?

Also, how much PBL does Harvard's curriculum actually have? And how much lecture? You don't have similar PBL complaints as the rest of the posters here? ...just wondering, thanks.
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i like your teeth :love:
 
CaptainZero said:
This thread is great...
I think i agree with everyone on this board...I don't hate my school, but there's a ton of frustrating things to deal with - but after reading this thread, i realize that these frustrations are surprisingly universal.
So the things I hate about med school (specifically the MS2 year):

1) Famed Professor X gives his lecture on...say "thyroid disorders" - which he talks about for 5 minutes before delving into his "grounding breaking" research involving the thryroid receptor kinase phosphorylase promotor response element 2nd messenger that will aparently cure every disease known to man, for the next 90 minutes.

2)the Pre-clinical years "clinical skills" teaching. Like someone else said, when you're a starry eyed premed trying to pick a school, you want to go to a school that gives "clinical experience" in MS1 & MS2. I was this way. Now that i have it I realize its a waste of time - time that i need to be memorizing professor X's thyroid research for the F'ing exam. You seriously don't know **** as a first or second year med student, and allowing you to play doctor a few times a week only proves this. Great, I can do a complete H&P on a standardized patient or some poor soul that gets corned in the ER to act as my guinnea pig - I definately could've waited until 3rd year to learn that. I give tours at my school and the perspective applicants always ask about how much clinical experience you get in the 1st two years...I grit my teeth and answer.

3) My school barely teaches pharm or micro either...i feel like its going to be a huge hole to fill during my step 1 studying. Despite this, we have dozens of lectures on surgical therapies/techniques, EKG interpretation etc (all of which get forgotten shortly after the exam) and countless other things that aren't tested on the boards.

4) The daily feeling that all the work i do is valueless because i forget most of what i learn w/in a week after any given exam. We have a organ system based curriculum and in any given section, we're given a mountain of info to learn in a rediculously short period of time ...so we study countless hours a day and all night trying to cram it all in. But then we take the exam, may or may not do well, but either way move on and end up forgetting everything. It's very frustrating.

5) I hate this whole self study kick my school is on. What they do is cut out lectures and instead just assign the corresponding chapters in Harrison's for us to read. Harrison's is a bit much as a second year med school text...and if I'm teaching myself, what exactly is my $40K a year in tuition going to??

Wow...that was a bit like a therapy session...
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Oh my gosh! I read this is and it was nearly insane! I was practically screaming, "YES! YES! YES!" I'm glad other people have this experience and my school isn't the only one that makes you feel wildly incompetent!
 
quideam said:
I believe we go to the same school... and I have the same exact complaints. I like it overall, especially now that we're into BOD and it's fairly interesting, but last year... man, that was boring and pretty useless - especially some of those PBL cases! Argh.

Quid
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I think we're all at the same school. I'm a first year here... I spent the whole fall memorizing cartoons and acronyms of receptor molecules that I can't for the life of me remember now that it is almost March. Also, I'm tired of hearing so many people stand and look at their test scores and groan about how they "failed," when the class average is 99.9979.

emack said:
And while one is less likely to nod off, one is more likely to have a hit list of selected classmates with whom one has uncovered irreconcilable personality conflicts.
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emack and blake--if you're at the school I think you are, then that's the place I very nearly went and had such trouble deciding over, and the one that I so often wonder whether I'd be happier at if I had gone there! It's a relief to know I'd probably be as thrilled with PBL at either place. (However, I do still think the local food markets would be better there. Grrr.)
 
I hate my medical school. Actually, I hate medicine.

:mad:
 
robotsonic said:
This is true, but as a first and second year med student, you sure as hell aren't going to perfect your skills at doing histories and physicals. I think it may actually be worse to start learning that in your first and second year, since your lack of medical knowledge forces you to ask the whole laundry list of questions - and not actually learn to tailor your history/exam to what the chief complaint is.

To mudpie: I think the early clinical experiences are 90% useless.
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Perhaps my school just did it up right, but I thought our M1 and M2 clinical exposure was very helpful when 3rd year came around. On day one of my first clerkship I could interview a patient and do a rudimentary PE. It doesn't sound like much now, but I'm trying to imagine what it would have been like if was 100% green and relying on the incredibly overworked surgery residents to teach me basic interview and exam skills.

One of the older attendings told me the difference was night and day after they instituted the clinical medicine course. By the end of third year it might not have mattered much, but I'm pretty sure the climb was a lot shallower for us.
 
PreMedAdAG said:
even though I complain sometimes I have to say that overall, I really like what i'm doing. I can't think of anything more challenging or cool... i have this awfully healthy love-hate relationship with medicine. There are days where i want to just stop and do something else, but there are far more days where i'm like, wow.. this is soooo me... this has my name written all over it and I'm killing it!!

It's a weird thing med school.. it can drive you crazy, but it's still pretty much the coolest thing i've ever done (the small portion that i have done at least)
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man, i feel the same way. sometimes i really like and sometimes i wish i went into something else. I guess I'm just not used to having school consume my whole entire life.
 
Ok, Paws has some decent complaints after reading Captain Zero's awesome comments. I could agree 100% with his (her?) comments and now I'll add some of my own.

We have course directors who are completely unwilling to talk to students or help them. At my school we have people who struggle - surprise! I am sure all schools have that. But say, you actually want to do better and are embarassed/scared/depresssed/stunned even, to find yourself near to failing. Ask the course director for any feedback or ideas, etc and you get nada. No response, no help no nothing. Nothing! We have one notorious course where alot of people have a hard time because it is so poorly taught. It's horrible.

Ask the dean's office for help and you get nada. So, how does that feel to find yourself in this weird overwhleming world where you may yourself see failing a course in your future and yet no resources to get you through. When I interviewed, we were told: we will help you!! tutors, support, you name it. We will even bake you a birthday cake. We love you!!

Anyway, when I talk to interviewees I also have to bite my lip and act like, well we do our best. It's incredibly frustrating to be left all to your own devices in such a tumultulous and high stakes situation. I almost want to say to the interviewees: no, don't go here. But that is not my place to say.

I just know that for me, we have alot that we could improve at my school and I know that I am not the only one who struggles with these same issues. We have no communication with the dean's office and it's as if we are all adrift on our own, doing the best we can. We want to make it a better school and we want to improve services for students, but it doesn't look like we're going to make a difference. But some of us do try.
 
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Paws said:
Anyway, when I talk to interviewees I also have to bite my lip and act like, well we do our best. It's incredibly frustrating to be left all to your own devices in such a tumultulous and high stakes situation. I almost want to say to the interviewees: no, don't go here. But that is not my place to say.
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But it is your place to say! You don't have to come out yelling "run away run away don't come here" but if they ask you how you like it there, you can say something like "well I like x and y a z but one weakness is that the resources for students in trouble are a little weak."

Moving on to the "weakness" of our school that drives me nuts - we have ridiculous IM requirements as a 4th year. We have to do not one but two AIs, a month of some sort of medicine specialty and a month of ambulatory medicine. So if you want to go into surgery or peds or whatever, of course you need to do an AI in it, so that's three AIs. And the director of medical education for IM acts like your AI is the most important component of your entire medical education. In reality we have the AI requirement because the IM department doesn't have enough residents and actually needs the 4th years to funtion, not because the AI is the sacred cow of medicine. But no telling her that. One student was pregnant on her AI and passed out a few times and had to go home, and this woman called her into her office and told her she needed to "deal with it" or she would fail her AI. :eek: And it is nigh impossible to get an honors in there. Many students who end up doing residencies at top IM programs get a high pass and have to explain our nazi AI system at all of their interviews.

Of course, I don't call it "our nazi AI system" when talking to applicants. I'm a tad more diplomatic. But I do mention it.
 
This thread should be "the official what I hate about med school thread."

What I hate is that I work my ass off and still perform way below the average in my class. When I see a class average of 91% I just get really demotivated. I spend hours on end painfully hunched over my laptop trying to memorize all this crap and the affirmation I get is more like a kick in the nuts. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

It will get better right? No. Third year OBGYN rotation will probably be even more demoralizing. Even now I am preparing myself to assume the fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

I shouldn't feel this way. I am passing my classes. I wish they wouldn't tell us the mean and SD for the tests. Ignorance is bliss.

If only I could just fast forward and be a 4th year right now.
 
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i61164 said:
... What I hate is that I work my ass off and still perform way below the average in my class. When I see a class average of 91% I just get really demotivated. I spend hours on end painfully hunched over my laptop trying to memorize all this crap and the affirmation I get is more like a kick in the nuts. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

It will get better right? No. Third year OBGYN rotation will probably be even more demoralizing....
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:oops:

This makes me feel better, i611. Ah, and spoken in honest truth. My grades are up and down and sometimes I just can't predict how I will do. It feels crazy. But I agree, I am also dreading ob/gyn ... whenever I am in the department for my own appointments I can hear them criticising the students. :scared:
 
i61164 said:
This thread should be "the official what I hate about med school thread."

What I hate is that I work my ass off and still perform way below the average in my class. When I see a class average of 91% I just get really demotivated. I spend hours on end painfully hunched over my laptop trying to memorize all this crap and the affirmation I get is more like a kick in the nuts. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

It will get better right? No. Third year OBGYN rotation will probably be even more demoralizing. Even now I am preparing myself to assume the fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

I shouldn't feel this way. I am passing my classes. I wish they wouldn't tell us the mean and SD for the tests. Ignorance is bliss.

If only I could just fast forward and be a 4th year right now.
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Hang in there guys! I'm a fourth year now, and I remember feeling exactly like you did--it feels like it was yesterday. 3rd year goes by so fast, and fourth year is so sweet. You will get through it, and you will be here, awaiting the match results, before you know it.

PS: OBGYN IS painful, but hey, it's a short amount of time in the long run, and then you never have to do it again:)
 
PLK7905 said:
Hang in there guys! I'm a fourth year now, and I remember feeling exactly like you did--it feels like it was yesterday. 3rd year goes by so fast, and fourth year is so sweet. You will get through it, and you will be here, awaiting the match results, before you know it.

PS: OBGYN IS painful, but hey, it's a short amount of time in the long run, and then you never have to do it again:)
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Unless you want to do OBGYN... then it will be everyday of your life :)
 
i61164 said:
This thread should be "the official what I hate about med school thread."

What I hate is that I work my ass off and still perform way below the average in my class. When I see a class average of 91% I just get really demotivated. I spend hours on end painfully hunched over my laptop trying to memorize all this crap and the affirmation I get is more like a kick in the nuts. I have never felt so inadequate in my life.

It will get better right? No. Third year OBGYN rotation will probably be even more demoralizing. Even now I am preparing myself to assume the fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

I shouldn't feel this way. I am passing my classes. I wish they wouldn't tell us the mean and SD for the tests. Ignorance is bliss.

If only I could just fast forward and be a 4th year right now.
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Hey I6

Don't worry man...it is all the same in the end.....keep your eyes on the big picture....

I stopped caring about where I am long time back :) .... ah the blissfulness of P/F
 
P/F sounds pretty sweet. I know it's all smoke in mirrors and they are still keeping track of every little percentage point so they can rank you 3rd year, but like I said, ignorance is bliss. Don't worry, I'll hang in there. It feels good to vent though...
 
Quideam...Robotsonic, I have a question for you two.

Since I could end up choosing between your school and the one that probably preaches the complete opposite regarding PBL... I'm wondering if you were in my shoes, which would you choose?
 
Hmmm... i would really have to know what that other school is, and what their curriculum is like. If, for instance, if you're choosing between our program and a school w/ lectures and labs 9-5, then stick with mine. So it really depends. In retrospect, the only schools i would have chosen over mine are UPenn (done with basic sciences in 1.5 years) and Yale (absolutely NO grades). That's it.

Good luck, and if you want more specific advice, PM me.

Quid
 
Wildthing said:
Quideam...Robotsonic, I have a question for you two.

Since I could end up choosing between your school and the one that probably preaches the complete opposite regarding PBL... I'm wondering if you were in my shoes, which would you choose?
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Ok, I've sort of tried to remain semi-anonymous by not naming my medical school, but now that rank lists are in it doesn't really matter, so I'll reveal... the medical school we are talking about is Cornell.

I'm not exactly sure what the "complete opposite regarding PBL" at Cornell would be. There is this belief that Cornell is all PBL, but it isn't! PBL is 3 times a week, at the most, for an hour and a half in the morning. The rest of the time is spent in small group sessions (like regular small group sessions, NOT PBL) and in lecture. Lecture time is limited. So what is the complete opposite of this?

You know my opinion on PBL. I hated it. But it didn't take up a huge amount of my time - it took up more time than it was worth, certainly, but it still wasn't a huge amount of time overall. Because of this, I don't think that the fact that it has PBL should really make a difference in anyone's decision to go to Cornell or not. Many applicants are surprised when I say that - they somehow think that Cornell is an all PBL school.

Which other school are you considering? Like I said, don't let PBL be the deciding factor. Let other things, like living in NYC in cheap housing, be the deciding factor ;)
 
My school has this whole "lots of clinical experience".... thing. But we do it in two ways:

1. Just like everyone else we have preceptors where we are forced to go once or twice a week for 3 hours a shot to someone's clinic and work with them (i.e follow them aroung). We're lucky if we get to do an H&P on our own by the end of the whole thing 1st year.

2. We have a student run free clinic, this clinc is for those in our community who cannot afford healthcare. The clinic has like 5-6 rooms and only 1 attending who sits in an office. The teams are run by 3rd and 4th years, each team is approx 4-5 students. Most teams will have 1-3rd year and the rest 1st and 2nd years. They go in and examine the patient, do the H&P and come up with a diagnosis, write a note and do a treatment plan. What's nice is that as a 3rd and 4th year, you're in the hospital all day long so do you really want to do CLODIERS again? NO! SO you have NO problem letting the 1st year take a crack at it and then helping him/her along when they get stuck.

OF both of these ways I think #2 is fantastic, I hated the preceptorship (it was a collosall waste of time). But our clinic is voluntary, go if you want, don't go if you don't want. It's up to you. And those who want clinical exposure go and learn and feel like they get something out of it. Usually the 2nd year is pimped by the 3rd/4th year on the path/micro/pharm of the patient and the treatment. The 1st year gets good practice on taking an H&P and both get to see good physical findings if they're there. The 3rd/4th year get practice on how to effectively lead a team and how to teach to those who know less than you. IT's nice.

So I guess what I'm saying is pre-3rd year clinical experience is good, if it's not forced and if it's done well.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents. :)
 
So what's the name of the school.... :confused:

robotsonic said:
I don't hate my med school, and I certainly had a good time here. But now that I'm a fourth year and I'm looking back, there are definitely things I would have changed about my medical education.

A lot of these things are aspects of medical schools that I thought were positives when I applied. For example, I chose a school with PBL because I liked the concept as it was presented, but I found that droning on and on about the minutiae of some uncommon disorder is actually boring and not really an efficient use of time (which is what we often did in PBL). My school is also one that "does not teach to the Boards." No, really, it doesn't; in fact, many of us are pretty unprepared for step 1 when we have to start studying for it. Many of us learn pharmacology and microbiology for the FIRST TIME when we study for step 1. My school is ranked highly, but that is just sad. Instead of all those pointless lectures with famous scientists talking about their oh-so-interesting research on the configuration of Protein 235JK9820, maybe we could have had a few more lessons on pharm, or on the genetic enzyme-deficiency disorders that most of us hadn't heard of until we read First Aid for Step 1. In the end I did fine on step 1, but I still feel like there was a ton of important information in the exam that I had not been taught in my first two years.

Also, pre-meds often think that "early clinical exposure" is a bonus, as I thought. My school brags that one day a week is spent working with physicians in their clinics. The truth is that you don't have a freaking clue what you are doing yet, so you end up just shadowing a physician, which is boring and utterly pointless. Before you actually learn a few things about medicine, you don't get much out of these experiences (and yet they take up a lot of time).

So I don't hate my school, but it does have a few areas to improve.
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Sometimes some of the schools that treat their students the worst have the best alumni associations and best donations. I still can't figure that out though. :confused:
 
robotsonic said:
The rest of the time is spent in small group sessions (like regular small group sessions, NOT PBL) and in lecture. Lecture time is limited. So what is the complete opposite of this?
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Would you mind explaining the difference between PBL and small group sessions? If it's not PBL, what is the difference between meeting in a small group and going to a lecture?
 
diosa428 said:
Would you mind explaining the difference between PBL and small group sessions? If it's not PBL, what is the difference between meeting in a small group and going to a lecture?
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PBL at Cornell is like this: On Monday you get in your small groups (about 10 students plus one physician preceptor) and you are given the beginning of a case. For example, you will all get a paper with information about a new patient to your office who is complaining of abdominal pain. Then you will spend the next hour and a half discussing this case. At the end of that time, you will all split up topics that you will present on Wednesday. You go home, look up your topic, research it, and make a short presentation with a 1-page handout. On Wednesday you will all present and then receive more parts to the case, like maybe some other lab values or physical exam findings. You will discuss again, then again choose more topics to research for Friday. You get the picture. Each week is a new case, and you discuss that one case for the whole week during your PBL time, which occurs Mon, Wed, Fri from 8-9:30am (for most courses).

That's PBL. You can read my opinion on this in my previous posts.

Small group sessions occur when you meet in your group of 10 students, but you aren't doing PBL. You might be going over histology, pathology, microbiology, any kind of problem sets that were assigned, etc. You might even go over cases. For example, when you are learning about pulmonary disease, you might have a small group session with a pulmonologist (each group will have its own attending). In this session, you will all read a paragraph about a case (maybe a patient with fever and cough) and then discuss the differential diagnosis, what tests you might order, and how to treat the problem. You will do 3 to 5 of these cases in an hour. It sounds very similar to PBL, doesn't it? The HUGE difference is that in these sessions, someone is leading them and ensuring that you don't go completely off track, as there is a time limit and you need to cover all of the cases. The pulmonologist, being an expert in the field, will quickly get you to the key information that you need to focus on. You cover a lot of useful information very quickly, and you remember it because you remember the cases. If you've read my earlier posts, you can see how different this is from PBL.
 
GREAT thread. I couldn't agree more with these posts. I'm having to convince myself more and more everyday that there is some good about getting up in the morning and going to my PBL session. It is especially hard when you hear about another PBL student from the previous class that didn't pass boards...for the SECOND time :eek:

Clinical exposure is both good and bad. Most days it amounts to shadowing, but I don't have much prior clinical experience so it has been vaguely helpful at best.

Is anyone else's school requiring OSCEs for SECOND YEAR students? Please someone say yes... That was the genius idea from the dean because apparently we don't have enough to worry about with final exams and boards... we need to pass second year OSCE in order to even sit for boards and become MSIII!! :mad: :mad:
 
gclax30 said:
GREAT thread. I couldn't agree more with these posts. I'm having to convince myself more and more everyday that there is some good about getting up in the morning and going to my PBL session. It is especially hard when you hear about another PBL student from the previous class that didn't pass boards...for the SECOND time :eek:

Clinical exposure is both good and bad. Most days it amounts to shadowing, but I don't have much prior clinical experience so it has been vaguely helpful at best.

Is anyone else's school requiring OSCEs for SECOND YEAR students? Please someone say yes... That was the genius idea from the dean because apparently we don't have enough to worry about with final exams and boards... we need to pass second year OSCE in order to even sit for boards and become MSIII!! :mad: :mad:
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Try first year OSCEs!!! It was really stressful studying for exams, shelfs, and the OSCE at the same time. :thumbdown:

We have to pass a mid-term and final OSCE in order to move on to 2nd year........

-tx
 
robotsonic said:
PBL at Cornell is like this: On Monday you get in your small groups (about 10 students plus one physician preceptor) and you are given the beginning of a case. For example, you will all get a paper with information about a new patient to your office who is complaining of abdominal pain. Then you will spend the next hour and a half discussing this case. At the end of that time, you will all split up topics that you will present on Wednesday. You go home, look up your topic, research it, and make a short presentation with a 1-page handout. On Wednesday you will all present and then receive more parts to the case, like maybe some other lab values or physical exam findings. You will discuss again, then again choose more topics to research for Friday. You get the picture. Each week is a new case, and you discuss that one case for the whole week during your PBL time, which occurs Mon, Wed, Fri from 8-9:30am (for most courses).
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Good Lord. I would rather have a red hot poker pounded into my rectum.
 
I must admit that sounds like a tedious process of learning - I always found it easier to just memorise the symptoms and signs from a book - and then when you get into the real situation it sort of just synchronises - scary getting started though while you are waiting for it to synch!

In my student days I used to routinely skip tutorials as much as I could get away with.

I liked the tutors who demonstrated clinical skills by themselves seeing an unknown patient in front of the group and telling us what they could determine before mucking around with path testing - it helped you see the point of it all. One Cardiologist called the Stethoscope the "Guessing Tube" and argued it should only be used to confirm or refute your conclusion deduced from other clinical findings, because you would not hear much that led you to a diagnosis if you had no idea what you were listening for first.
 
Misterioso said:
That's not really true. Histories and physical exams are not something you can learn, nevertheless perfect, in such a short amount of time. You don't need to even be a med student to memorize a laundry list of questions to regurgitate for a history or the motions to go through for a physical exam, but that's not really taking a history and physical--that's just acting like you are. It takes much more practice to be able to put it all together and consolidate your findings. Most residents don't even have it perfected.
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THIS IS A GR8 POST. ENJOYED EVERY BIT OF IT. KUDOS
 
gclax30 said:
GREAT thread. I couldn't agree more with these posts. I'm having to convince myself more and more everyday that there is some good about getting up in the morning and going to my PBL session. It is especially hard when you hear about another PBL student from the previous class that didn't pass boards...for the SECOND time :eek:

Clinical exposure is both good and bad. Most days it amounts to shadowing, but I don't have much prior clinical experience so it has been vaguely helpful at best.

Is anyone else's school requiring OSCEs for SECOND YEAR students? Please someone say yes... That was the genius idea from the dean because apparently we don't have enough to worry about with final exams and boards... we need to pass second year OSCE in order to even sit for boards and become MSIII!! :mad: :mad:
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How about OSCE's for first years! I had an OSCE the day before a test (and all of our subjects are tested on the same day). Ugh...oh well, first year is almost over...
 
Does anyone here go to Northwestern????? someone please let me know what is wrong with this school before I make a huge decision. I loved everything I saw and I just want a reality check right now. I plan on going to second look weekend but i know how these things go....... someone...anyone...help!
 
Anyone making the big decision should choose a school with P/F preclinical years. This will make your life a million times better.
 
MedicineBird said:
I don't suppose I hate it but not a day goes by that I don't wonder if I made a poor choice in coming here. A lot of days I feel like I was duped. It was actually my New Year's resolution to get over it because there's nothing I can do about it now. I need to try to find my place here. I try to tell myself that it's just a case of the grass looking greener on the other side of the fence but I know that's not all true. **sigh** :(
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I'm thankful for this thread. Through I can't say I am necessarily unhappy with the way I'm being educated, I loathe my geographical location and the majority of its inhabitants. I've had nothing but negatives befalll me since starting here, and wish to move far, far away from here (and New Jersey on the whole) when I'm done with my education.

This thread must not die.
 
I think my school is pretty good all around. I just wish it wasn't in an armpit of the south.
 
robotsonic said:
I don't hate my med school, and I certainly had a good time here. But now that I'm a fourth year and I'm looking back, there are definitely things I would have changed about my medical education.

A lot of these things are aspects of medical schools that I thought were positives when I applied. For example, I chose a school with PBL because I liked the concept as it was presented, but I found that droning on and on about the minutiae of some uncommon disorder is actually boring and not really an efficient use of time (which is what we often did in PBL). My school is also one that "does not teach to the Boards." No, really, it doesn't; in fact, many of us are pretty unprepared for step 1 when we have to start studying for it. Many of us learn pharmacology and microbiology for the FIRST TIME when we study for step 1. My school is ranked highly, but that is just sad. Instead of all those pointless lectures with famous scientists talking about their oh-so-interesting research on the configuration of Protein 235JK9820, maybe we could have had a few more lessons on pharm, or on the genetic enzyme-deficiency disorders that most of us hadn't heard of until we read First Aid for Step 1. In the end I did fine on step 1, but I still feel like there was a ton of important information in the exam that I had not been taught in my first two years.

Also, pre-meds often think that "early clinical exposure" is a bonus, as I thought. My school brags that one day a week is spent working with physicians in their clinics. The truth is that you don't have a freaking clue what you are doing yet, so you end up just shadowing a physician, which is boring and utterly pointless. Before you actually learn a few things about medicine, you don't get much out of these experiences (and yet they take up a lot of time).

So I don't hate my school, but it does have a few areas to improve.
Click to expand...

You're school doesn't teach pharm and micro? I would of thought
that would be a given at every US allopathic school. Please PM
me the name of that school I'm interested in knowing.
 
I mostly love my school, but I find the enforced ultra-liberal bias kind of grating some times (I am a moderate who usually votes Dem). It's like you can believe whatever you want, but you better not open your mouth about patient personal responsibility or doctors or drug companies deserving to be paid for their services. The phrase, "most close-mindedly open-minded place in the world," comes to mind a lot.
 
robotsonic said:
PBL at Cornell is like this: On Monday you get in your small groups (about 10 students plus one physician preceptor) and you are given the beginning of a case. For example, you will all get a paper with information about a new patient to your office who is complaining of abdominal pain. Then you will spend the next hour and a half discussing this case. At the end of that time, you will all split up topics that you will present on Wednesday. You go home, look up your topic, research it, and make a short presentation with a 1-page handout. On Wednesday you will all present and then receive more parts to the case, like maybe some other lab values or physical exam findings. You will discuss again, then again choose more topics to research for Friday. You get the picture. Each week is a new case, and you discuss that one case for the whole week during your PBL time, which occurs Mon, Wed, Fri from 8-9:30am (for most courses).

That's PBL. You can read my opinion on this in my previous posts.

Small group sessions occur when you meet in your group of 10 students, but you aren't doing PBL. You might be going over histology, pathology, microbiology, any kind of problem sets that were assigned, etc. You might even go over cases. For example, when you are learning about pulmonary disease, you might have a small group session with a pulmonologist (each group will have its own attending). In this session, you will all read a paragraph about a case (maybe a patient with fever and cough) and then discuss the differential diagnosis, what tests you might order, and how to treat the problem. You will do 3 to 5 of these cases in an hour. It sounds very similar to PBL, doesn't it? The HUGE difference is that in these sessions, someone is leading them and ensuring that you don't go completely off track, as there is a time limit and you need to cover all of the cases. The pulmonologist, being an expert in the field, will quickly get you to the key information that you need to focus on. You cover a lot of useful information very quickly, and you remember it because you remember the cases. If you've read my earlier posts, you can see how different this is from PBL.
Click to expand...

How energetic/ interesting are the PBL sessions? Does everyone contribute equally or is it just one /two people doing the talking while everyone else stares?
 
Timmythemic22 said:
I'm thankful for this thread. Through I can't say I am necessarily unhappy with the way I'm being educated, I loathe my geographical location and the majority of its inhabitants. I've had nothing but negatives befalll me since starting here, and wish to move far, far away from here (and New Jersey on the whole) when I'm done with my education.

This thread must not die.
Click to expand...


is NJMS that bad?
 
I hate my med school, but I've given up on it changing and just try to play the game...

  • We have way to many professors and guest lecturers so the material is never coherent
  • Most professors don't know how to teach or put together a lecture that is easy to read and understand
  • There are numerous errors in our syllabus that never get changed
  • Our tests rarely reflect the lectures and hardly reflect boad style questions...some test are so poorly written that we've had the same question 3 times
  • We often have more than 7 hours of lecure a day...
  • Many of our lectures present babied clinical straight forward material, but then the tests ask minutia from a book ment for a PhD...
  • our path tests averages are often below a 70, and when we try to tell the professor that means something is wrong with the test or the teaching, she just gets defensive and blames our class personally
  • I'm on student council and when we bring these points up, the professors get defensive and upset and nothing ever changes

The problem with many med schools is the lack of educational background. Most medical school professors are old doctors or PhD's that are on their way to retiring and just want a cush job until that retirement day comes. It takes a degree an education to teach kindergarden, but most medical school professors don't have the slightest idea how to teach or what is effective. Not to mention you have alot of old doctors with egos who aren't willing to change. We had one professor (who is gone now) that would actually photo copy pages out of a book and use an old slide projector as his lectures. We have another guy who is still here, who refuses to let his lectures be recorded and won't give his notes (wants everyone to come to class and frantically write down what he's saying like its 1973). Our physiology syllabus is 14 years old and causes problems with every new class but never gets chanegs. This is why many medical schools suck at teaching. I basically pay 60k a year to teach my self. But like I said, I deal with it and just can't wait till 3rd year...

And no I won't say what school I go to because being on student council, this could get me in a lot of crap...
 
Anyone from any of the Florida Schools got beef with their school?:confused:
 
i can't say too much about medschool but i hate the location and the attitude.
 
Any thoughts on UCSD? I know UCSD is heavily lecture-based. Does anyone have any strong feelings about this school that the pre-meds making decisions this year should know?

I'd appreciate any input. You can PM me if you want.
 
robotsonic said:
I don't hate my med school, and I certainly had a good time here. But now that I'm a fourth year and I'm looking back, there are definitely things I would have changed about my medical education.

A lot of these things are aspects of medical schools that I thought were positives when I applied. For example, I chose a school with PBL because I liked the concept as it was presented, but I found that droning on and on about the minutiae of some uncommon disorder is actually boring and not really an efficient use of time (which is what we often did in PBL). My school is also one that "does not teach to the Boards." No, really, it doesn't; in fact, many of us are pretty unprepared for step 1 when we have to start studying for it. Many of us learn pharmacology and microbiology for the FIRST TIME when we study for step 1. My school is ranked highly, but that is just sad. Instead of all those pointless lectures with famous scientists talking about their oh-so-interesting research on the configuration of Protein 235JK9820, maybe we could have had a few more lessons on pharm, or on the genetic enzyme-deficiency disorders that most of us hadn't heard of until we read First Aid for Step 1. In the end I did fine on step 1, but I still feel like there was a ton of important information in the exam that I had not been taught in my first two years.

Also, pre-meds often think that "early clinical exposure" is a bonus, as I thought. My school brags that one day a week is spent working with physicians in their clinics. The truth is that you don't have a freaking clue what you are doing yet, so you end up just shadowing a physician, which is boring and utterly pointless. Before you actually learn a few things about medicine, you don't get much out of these experiences (and yet they take up a lot of time).

So I don't hate my school, but it does have a few areas to improve.
Click to expand...

I agree with everything said here.
 
SoFlaKnight said:
Anyone from any of the Florida Schools got beef with their school?:confused:
Click to expand...


I go to UMiami....I love the school and the faculty...just can't freaking stand Miami!!!! The people in this city are so incredibly rude and I feel like if I survive all 4 years of medical school here without getting shot, it will be some sort of miracle. :rolleyes: But, we get amazing clinical exposure (and I agree that at first you have no idea what you are doing...though I feel now I appreciate my clinical days so much more because it solidifies knowledge that I've learned in the classroom and oftentimes teaches me so much more than what I could learn from a book). Also we focus alot on universal healthcare...helping everyone around us, especially the uninsured (and in Miami, that's the majority of the population), and helping those in our surrounding countries. I know that UF has jumped on the bandwagon of going to Haiti and D.R., though I don't think it's nearly as "established."

Good luck in Med school...the first year is the worst, survive that year and everything will look up! (and in case your wondering, it's not because the first year is hard, it's just that all of a sudden not having the life that you feel like you used to have is the hardest part)
 
I didn't even notice your screen name until after I posted, but assuming SoFla means "South Florida"...sorry to offend your home/hometown...it's just very different from North Florida.
 
CaptainZero said:
1) Famed Professor X gives his lecture on...say "thyroid disorders" - which he talks about for 5 minutes before delving into his "grounding breaking" research involving the thryroid receptor kinase phosphorylase promotor response element 2nd messenger that will aparently cure every disease known to man, for the next 90 minutes.
Click to expand...

Thankfully, my med school actually banned this behavior :)

CaptainZero said:
2)the Pre-clinical years "clinical skills" teaching. Like someone else said, when you're a starry eyed premed trying to pick a school, you want to go to a school that gives "clinical experience" in MS1 & MS2. I was this way. Now that i have it I realize its a waste of time - time that i need to be memorizing professor X's thyroid research for the F'ing exam. You seriously don't know **** as a first or second year med student, and allowing you to play doctor a few times a week only proves this. Great, I can do a complete H&P on a standardized patient or some poor soul that gets corned in the ER to act as my guinnea pig - I definately could've waited until 3rd year to learn that. I give tours at my school and the perspective applicants always ask about how much clinical experience you get in the 1st two years...I grit my teeth and answer.
Click to expand...

100% correct.
 
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