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Nice! Thank You. Clearly, you have good taste!
Anyone else losing interest?
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Nice! Thank You. Clearly, you have good taste!
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Wow. You sound like a bitter little man/woman.
4th year has been...amazing, just like I said. I do what I want, when I want = Amazing.
3rd year, heck, was actually a lot of fun and you really learn a lot...especially looking back on it....people bitch a lot about it, that its stressful, but I think that these individuals lack perspective. I've been in the "real world" and held a truly "stressful" job...what is required of a 3rd year medical student is not that
2nd year, for me personally, was great too and I thought it was a breeze outside of the pressure of killing step 1
1st year was still a great experience
Do I agree with the amount of money medical school costs (and I get in state tuition) or how it is structured throughout the 4 years or the overall length of time? Heck NO! There are so many things wrong with the system as is, but....that's not the question at hand per the OP.
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I really enjoy medicine and can't wait until I can actually do things. My main gripe is how inefficient this system is. You always hear residents say, "You'll learn more in your first month of residency than all of 3rd and 4th year combined". That really pisses me off, not all but many people could care less about teaching the med student and I don't blame them, they're their to learn and survive their own residency/job. Let's trim some of the fat then. Studies have been done (not saying I buy it) that have shown NP's to be "just as effective" as pcp's (I'm paraphrasing here) in delivering care. Yet nobody questions the length of our training. I've known I want to go into IM and specialize, yet I still as a 4th year have to do required surgery rotations? Glad I'm paying for that. Again, I really enjoy talking with patients and helping them through their illness, no, I don't think you have to be a genius to practice it (don't know why someone would think that), but it is pretty interesting considering how much these ailments can negatively impact people's lives.
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Also, this doom and gloom nonsense, you'll make a great living and can have a very reasonable schedule if money isn't your #1 priority. A lot of people in medicine grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth, it's clearly not for everyone but if you think the grass is always greener you need to wake up and smell what you're shoveling.
Thank you for this refreshing honesty. It's what I've suspected for a while now but didn't say out loud.
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A lot of careers in law, engineering, business, and science practically DO boil down to mindless clerical jobs, though.
All these fields sound glamorous/interesting to the lay person, but under scrutiny they're, on average, pretty furckin mundane. Of course plenty of exceptions exist, but the fields mentioned are rife with ****ty jobs and seemingly pointless careers IMO.
Before medicine, I had a short career at a "prestigious" company, and at least from my n=1 experience, the worst of medicine is still more desirable than the best positions in that company. Lawyers, Management, Engineers, Scientists were all as miserable or worse than we are in medicine, yet they only had a fraction of our future salaries & no job security to speak of. Higher-ups were paid like MD's, but were constantly uprooting their families at the company's whim due to random restructuring and other business reasons. It's an ugly world out there, and all things considered, medicine/med school ain't all that bad.
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Ah yes, the ad hominem attack.
You used a lot of adjectives, but said nothing of substance. Sounds like you're the typical uncreative med student that eats the slop with a grin on your face.
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You act like he speaks fact, but it's just opinion. For instance, I totally agree that med school could be condensed into 3 years, but I accepted that I was going to pay for 4 years of training when I went in. You might as well make the most of 4th year and either do rotations you're interested in, take tons of time off, or do easy rotations that give you time off. If you're stuck with someone else's scut during 4th year, you just massively failed at planning your year.
I also agree that there are plenty of attendings who plain don't give a crap about your time, but that doesn't mean you have to be their bitch constantly. You also don't have to suck up. I've gotten through med school and half of intern year without being sycophantic, and I don't plan on changing course now. For the grade grubbers out there, yes I've gotten good evaluations - excellent ones, actually - all the way through. You don't have to be a brown-nosing douche to succeed.
I'm no med school apologist, by any means, but at least accurately appraise the situation you're in and make the most of it. Cynicism isn't going to get you far when you can't change anything about the medical education system now that you're in the thick of it. Might as well make the best of it and power through. The best can be pretty damn good if you play your cards right.
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I agree we should not be comparing the current MEDICAL EDUCATION SYSTEM to MINDLESS CLERICAL JOBS.
How about comparing current MEDICAL EDUCATION SYSTEM to some other new INNOVATIVE MEDICAL EDUCATION SYSTEMS.
I think many of you already know in your hearts that there are probably better ways to train doctors that leave out the hierarchical indoctrination and the nonproductive busywork. So this should naturally beg the question, if things CAN be done better, why are things restricted to being done this same one old-fashioned way?
In all honesty, as much as it would benefit a nation of medical students for the powers that be to allow innovation into medical education, that's a drop in the bucket compared to how much it would benefit a nation of patients for the powers that be to allow innovation into the overall delivery of healthcare. And THAT'S why we should be passionate about thinking outside the box.
So fine, you say, what's the next step?
That answer is different for each of us. For me, it begins with what I'm doing, namely gathering information from medical students as to what opinions they have on the acceptability of the current system and helping stimulate open-minded thinking.
I have ideas, but I know that if I just force it down upon everyone, it would not be nearly as helpful as facilitating each of you to figure things out on your own.
So one place to start is to think about the balance between an individual-freedom / free-market / anarchy model and a central-planning / bureaucratic / government-regulated model of healthcare delivery? By the way, I'm trying to be balanced in the use of good-sounding and bad-sounding terms to described similar things. "free-market" sounds good. "anarchy" sounds bad. But they describe the same concept. "central-planning" sounds bad. "government-regulated" sounds better. But they describe the same concept.
So here is the question: To what extent is it better to shift medical decision power more to the provider and patient and to what extent is it better to shift medical decision power to politicians and insurance committees. I will concede that 100% in either direction is not as optimal as somewhere in the middle. But as it stands, are we too far one way or another? (this is a rhetorical question as my own mind is made up on this), but each of you may want to ask yourself. Should more power be in the hands of central planning committees to regulate the delivery of healthcare, the pay of providers and the choices of patients or should more power be in the hands of the patients and doctors themselves? Whatever your answer is, justify why you feel that way?
Perhaps it's time to take this to another thread if there is sufficient interest. Thanks!
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Well I agree with you. Notice my posts weren't geared towards strategy. I was just describing the landscape. If I came across like I was actually being that typical sycophantic med student, then I wrote poorly. I was not that person, but being surrounded by them is exhausting and just adds to the hell.
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Quite the opposite. You sound like someone who thinks they're far more intelligent than they really are and compensates with superfluous posts and odd peripheral references.
I hate the system as much as you do. Trust me. Our system is a rip-off, incredibly antiquated and growing more so by the second. But this wasn't the original debate. The OP referenced whether or not medical school gets better after M2 year. In my opinion, it does. If the OP were to have created a thread titled "how big a rip-off is medical school"....well, that's a different story.
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I full on LOLed at this, especially the bit about "playing Daniel-san" 😀
That said, I'm currently a pre-clinical student and I'd far rather be playing Daniel-san and doing scutwork on the wards than dozing off as some psychology fellow drones on and on about their Very Important Research in the lecture theatre.
I do indeed 😀
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Listen, I'm a nice guy, it was more of an observation based on your posts. That being said, I apologize if this seemed like a personal attack.
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Exactly.
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I love this guy calling people "sheep"...as though playing the role of unhappy med student and lambasting the system somehow equates to deep, critical thinking or some sort of unique realization. I doubt a med student/doc exists who didn't hate part of their training.
The idea that medical school can be done in 3 years? Also not unique. The Canucks have done this for years.
The idea that medical school is too expensive and could be done for less? Both points are true. Search any forum on here and you'll find tons of discussion on this.
Dealing with crazy classmates? Sucks.
Doing menial tasks? Sucks.
Sacrificing your time for the sake of residents/attendings who rarely respect yours? Sucks.
...does this mean all of medical school and medicine in general sucks? No.
For the OP, my 3rd year was way better than my m1 and m2. 4th year is way better than the others. It DOES get better. Like many things in life, parts of med school suck hard, and parts of it can be really good. Focus on the good parts and keep your eye on the prize.
The idea that medical school can be done in 3 years? Also not unique. The Canucks have done this for years.
The idea that medical school is too expensive and could be done for less? Both points are true. Search any forum on here and you'll find tons of discussion on this.
Dealing with crazy classmates? Sucks.
Doing menial tasks? Sucks.
Sacrificing your time for the sake of residents/attendings who rarely respect yours? Sucks.
...does this mean all of medical school and medicine in general sucks? No.
For the OP, my 3rd year was way better than my m1 and m2. 4th year is way better than the others. It DOES get better. Like many things in life, parts of med school suck hard, and parts of it can be really good. Focus on the good parts and keep your eye on the prize.
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Well, when you choose a stupid thing to get your bachelor's degree in (like moi), mindless jobs that really don't even require a degree are just about your only option while you take your prereqs. That said, you're right, it's not a fair comparison and I know that, but it does help me keep perspective about how much I want to be here, even when it sucks. Like KinasePro said, I would never trade my worst days in medical school for the best days I had at the jobs I worked before I started. I have other non-trad friends who are changing careers rather than working placeholder jobs between undergrad and medical school and in general, we seem less burnt-out than a lot of traditional students that started medical school right after earning their bachelor's degree.
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For all the negative things said about medical school, I'm grateful to have the chance to be a physician, have steady employment that is paid well, work with patients and occasionally make someone's day, and to learn a few fascinating things along the way. I've done a few very hard jobs - and this certainly isn't the worst (e.g. construction was much more difficult).
There are a million negative things about this process, but there's a million positive things too. We get to pick what to focus on.
There are a million negative things about this process, but there's a million positive things too. We get to pick what to focus on.
I worked a stint as a hospital telecom operator at the local trauma 1 for a while. You want misery and a whole lot of wasted time, try that out for a year... We worked in a dark and smelly basement (no windows), and most of the staff were chronically depressed. When we were between calls, our boss required us to complete word scrambles and crossword puzzles like we were ****ing babies just so that she could have the satisfaction that we weren't doing something we wanted to do (like reading a magazine). The only exciting things that happened were the occasional call through the emergency line or to send out pages to this or that team for whatever reason.
Everyone knows that **** rolls downhill. Well, at the very bottom of the hill are the janitors, some of the techs, and people like your lowly hospital operator. I used to get chewed out by everyone on the phones, all day, every day. I got patients calling me from the psych ward demanding that they be transferred to the President, the CIA, NSA, whatever. I was told by patients or family members that I was being sued on a regular basis. We had drug addicts we had to screen because the staff had blacklisted them. When the nurse didn't want to pick up and NONE of the on-call docs could be reached via pager, mobile, or any other method, we had to get screamed at. Most of the docs I spoke to talked to me like I was a *****.
"Give me such and such on the t-dap section of R wing C."
"What is that exactly doctor?" [scrambling to look it up in the database]
"What are you, new? Don't you know where you work? This is a hospital!"
"Doctor, please calm down and I will be happy to..."
"JUST GIVE ME SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING!" [doctor speaking to someone in the background: "Where do they find these idiots?"]
I do have to say that the nicest people we spoke to generally were the residents and interns (though they yawned an awful lot 😉 ), along with some of the more senior nurses and PT (why is PT always so happy?). I got out of that job as soon as I could, and I've worked a lot of crummy jobs over the years (lots of retail, public service gigs, and several years in a really crummy manufacturing/refinery job) but being a hospital operator was driving me to the brink.
So, the moral of the story is this. The next time you feel like you're wasting a year of your life as an MS4, call the hospital operator, and remember that the person on the other end has probably been there answering and transferring phone calls at $25,000-$30,000 per year for 15 years. Most of the operators I worked with were middle-aged women with terrible marriages who worked at our hospital full-time and did the same thing at another hospital either part-time or full-time. They put in 60-80 hours per week doing a job I couldn't handle at 40 hours per week for a year... Give me school any day! 🙂
Everyone knows that **** rolls downhill. Well, at the very bottom of the hill are the janitors, some of the techs, and people like your lowly hospital operator. I used to get chewed out by everyone on the phones, all day, every day. I got patients calling me from the psych ward demanding that they be transferred to the President, the CIA, NSA, whatever. I was told by patients or family members that I was being sued on a regular basis. We had drug addicts we had to screen because the staff had blacklisted them. When the nurse didn't want to pick up and NONE of the on-call docs could be reached via pager, mobile, or any other method, we had to get screamed at. Most of the docs I spoke to talked to me like I was a *****.
"Give me such and such on the t-dap section of R wing C."
"What is that exactly doctor?" [scrambling to look it up in the database]
"What are you, new? Don't you know where you work? This is a hospital!"
"Doctor, please calm down and I will be happy to..."
"JUST GIVE ME SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE DOING!" [doctor speaking to someone in the background: "Where do they find these idiots?"]
I do have to say that the nicest people we spoke to generally were the residents and interns (though they yawned an awful lot 😉 ), along with some of the more senior nurses and PT (why is PT always so happy?). I got out of that job as soon as I could, and I've worked a lot of crummy jobs over the years (lots of retail, public service gigs, and several years in a really crummy manufacturing/refinery job) but being a hospital operator was driving me to the brink.
So, the moral of the story is this. The next time you feel like you're wasting a year of your life as an MS4, call the hospital operator, and remember that the person on the other end has probably been there answering and transferring phone calls at $25,000-$30,000 per year for 15 years. Most of the operators I worked with were middle-aged women with terrible marriages who worked at our hospital full-time and did the same thing at another hospital either part-time or full-time. They put in 60-80 hours per week doing a job I couldn't handle at 40 hours per week for a year... Give me school any day! 🙂
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Sure that job might suck but you're comparing apples to oranges.
Also,
$25,000-$30,000 >>>>>> -$50,000 + interest
Except that with that -$50,000 comes a total income potential over 30 years of many millions. Those operators will earn less than $1,000,000 in their entire career. There are some MDs who earn that in a year, and many more who earn that in just two.
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my only question is...Kindasorta, have you started your zoloft treatment yet???
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Most doctors could earn more than 30k working as hard as they do.
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Earning potential doesn't argue against why 4th year is kind of a wasted year.
At any rate, you cannot compare a job to med school. You're paying for med school and med school is not like a job at all. Comparing med school to a crappy job is pointless. I could say "I hated when I got my wisdom teeth taken out, and med school is farrrr better than getting your wisdom teeth taken out, so stop complaining about med school."
D
deleted307836
But a job is what you would be doing/how you would be spending your time instead of med school (most likely), not having your teeth pulled continually... so they really are comparable from that POV. From what I've heard from those who have taken breaks between undergrad and MS, and as you can see from the responses in this thread, the perspective gained is very often useful.
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I have not. But I do agree that medical school should come with a bag of drugs to get you through it.
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True, but the comparisons made here have been far-fetched. If you were to quit med school today, your only other option would not be to work a minimum wage job for the rest of your life. It might be something you do temporarily, but a person with the ability to get into and survive med school could do the same in many other well-paying, interesting professions that aren't medicine. It's not like medicine is the only worthwhile profession in the world, and it's not like if you weren't in med school the skills that got you here would disappear. You're still intelligent, you're still driven and you should be able to find a job a lot better than a secretary or a telephone operator.
That being said, I appreciate the perspective that people have offered in the thread. Med school is a great opportunity and I do appreciate it. It just sucks when you look around and you see your friends making money and living "real" lives already while you're stuck in training for another 6 years for a future that might not even be worth it when you get there.
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haha that was pretty good kindasorta
YES!! I'm trying not to pass judgement here because I'm not in my clinical years yet and I very well could be on here next year at this time as bitter as many of you seem to be, however I've sampled my M1 and M2 years and I gotta say.... NOT a fan lol. I'm looking forward to clinical years despite the BS I hear you have to put up with because in my opinion it can't possibly get any worse than now.
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I always figured medicine was one of those fields where you had to REALLY want to do it, otherwise the amount of work and sacrifice would make one a bitter person. If I had thought when I was applying to medical school that I could be happy doing any other profession rather than medicine, I would've taken it. However, in my head, there was no other path that I felt I would be long-term happy in.
Clearly that is not the case with a large subset of the SDN population.
Clearly that is not the case with a large subset of the SDN population.
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Some of us aren't too adept at fortune-telling and knowing what a profession would be like without practicing it. Actually, none of us are.
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True. I can tell you a large subset of my own class is only here for the job security + money.
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I am.
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Tell that to the wife that you have yet to meet who will be blowing your pool man in 10 years.
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I ruled out every other healthcare related profession. Doctor was the only one left on the table. I could probably have been a pretty good engineer based on how I did in math and physics, but at the end of the day I didn't want to do it for the rest of my life.
I was also fortunate enough to have family and family friends in various specialties of medicine, so it's not like I have NO idea of what I'm getting into. Sorry to hear that the medical system isn't what you want it to be.
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Overall I was happier during 3rd and 4th year because I was actually up and about talking to people all day, instead of gutting it out in the basement of the library. I found it more stressful though with regards to grades. 1st/2nd year for the most part you know exactly how to do well, it's just a matter of putting in the work. Rotations are different, at least for me. There is just so much to learn, but you also have to figure out the people you are working with too.
4th year has been better, but I wouldn't say it's inherently that much better than 3rd year. It's better mainly because your evals don't matter past a certain point of the year (just like 4th year of high school) so there's less stress. People cut you some slack on rotations since you are a 4th year, and there are no tests to study for when you come home from the hospital. I've had more time for friends and family during 4th year than I ever had during medical school.
I'm really not looking forward to residency to a certain extent, when evals are going to matter again, and when there's going to be so much more pressure to perform. I do feel very lucky to be in medicine, and hearing some of my friends talk about their law/business jobs, I still much prefer medicine. I think medicine is way more interesting and personally rewarding. Though they feel like medicine is too long of a road and too much work to go through 😛
My advice to people like the OP is to stay focused on your goals. Think about match day. Where do you want to be headed? What specialty do you want to do? A lot of people who worked harder than me during medical school are going to be headed to much better programs than I am. Is it worth it? That's for you to decide.
4th year has been better, but I wouldn't say it's inherently that much better than 3rd year. It's better mainly because your evals don't matter past a certain point of the year (just like 4th year of high school) so there's less stress. People cut you some slack on rotations since you are a 4th year, and there are no tests to study for when you come home from the hospital. I've had more time for friends and family during 4th year than I ever had during medical school.
I'm really not looking forward to residency to a certain extent, when evals are going to matter again, and when there's going to be so much more pressure to perform. I do feel very lucky to be in medicine, and hearing some of my friends talk about their law/business jobs, I still much prefer medicine. I think medicine is way more interesting and personally rewarding. Though they feel like medicine is too long of a road and too much work to go through 😛
My advice to people like the OP is to stay focused on your goals. Think about match day. Where do you want to be headed? What specialty do you want to do? A lot of people who worked harder than me during medical school are going to be headed to much better programs than I am. Is it worth it? That's for you to decide.
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I've pre-emptively killed him.
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I can assure you that every year of medical school is better than the last, but people will always find something to complain about. However, if you ever find someone truly complaining about M4, they are one sad SOB who poorly chose their schedule.
I felt the same way too. However, the path taken to get there sucks the fun out. You can only 'sacrifice' for so long before you ultimately get fed up. I feel like there was no way to prepare us for the BS that is the medical education system and licensing process.
I do agree with others though that the clinical years were exponentially better than pre-clinical years.
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There is no shortage of innovators out there who want to challenge the current monopoly.
If we can extrapolate recent successes in the undergrad education realm, with ventures like Coursera, there may be great hope in the future for medical education's costs to be slashed.
Opening up the market to competition would certainly challenge the "old school" bureaucracy to shape up or move over.
Med students could collectively be taught first two years online using advanced web technology. This would greatly free up resources to utilize on more and better clinical training.
My experience with the non-clinical years was that it was not worth the tuition to have "live interaction" (one exception: dissection lab) over what we could have self-learned from books. Streamline that process and either cut tuition or apply the saving over into the clinical years.
If we can extrapolate recent successes in the undergrad education realm, with ventures like Coursera, there may be great hope in the future for medical education's costs to be slashed.
Opening up the market to competition would certainly challenge the "old school" bureaucracy to shape up or move over.
Med students could collectively be taught first two years online using advanced web technology. This would greatly free up resources to utilize on more and better clinical training.
My experience with the non-clinical years was that it was not worth the tuition to have "live interaction" (one exception: dissection lab) over what we could have self-learned from books. Streamline that process and either cut tuition or apply the saving over into the clinical years.
Problem there is there are many jobs are lost as a result of such a change. You lose those people who get degrees to teach others...how to teach others. I think we call it 'academia'. Even though everyone ultimately just learns on their own from textbooks.
Even in college we don't really need a lot of majors/fields that are out there, but we keep them because we need need people to ultimately have jobs, and cause it brings in more money. Example: entrepreneurship classes. By taking the class (instead of reading a self-help book) am I going to become the next success story, or just another entrepreneurship professor? Same with pre-clinical subjects.
I'm not too sure how charter schools work.
Do you mean to say they would have higher standards to meet?
99% of my med school professors are pretty terrible teachers. Same goes for my undergrad teachers. Most of them were more concerned with their research or clinical practice to care about their classes. Making the first 2 years online self study sounds pretty radical but at the same time I don't think the majority of the lectures I've had have added anything to my understanding. I think that calls for some change.
I wouldn't say my teachers in medical school were horrible. It's more like good teachers are hard to come by. If every school had a Goljan then he wouldn't be so famous. The problem with lectures during the 1st 2 years of medical school is that I would start zoning out 5 minutes into the lecture.
1st and 2nd years of medical school = staying awake at home > falling asleep in class
3rd and 4th years of medical school = willingness to teach > famous bigwig
1st and 2nd years of medical school = staying awake at home > falling asleep in class
3rd and 4th years of medical school = willingness to teach > famous bigwig
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The problem is they are terrible at teaching. I would say that 70-80% of the lecturers I've seen aren't even good. Maybe 20% are excellent.
Your entrepreneur example is perfect. It's a waste of $ but it's employing people - a sad reality and waste of resources. America has been a great nation for a long time, but you can't have entire sectors that are wasting time, money and resources on things that don't matter and continue to be excellent. Eventually those working on the important things and doing them well will win this game.
My school wasn't 99% but it was close. Maybe not the first 2 years of self study, but maybe the first 18 months? Then have some group stuff before transition (e.g. dissection or whatever).
Yeah, the old school bureaucracy is going to be the downfall of healthcare. Like I said above, it's only so long you can knowingly do something poorly or below average before you start to face major consequences.
I feel like that is the norm in terms of effective teachers worldwide. Educators like Goljan, Sattar, or Fischer only come around so often. The schools know this too, yet they don't want to admit to it. My school should've just bought us all subscriptions to Pathoma & given us a copy of RR, and kept the rest of the money for themselves. At least my time would've at least been better utilized. I'd actually make the school look way better too, in terms of board scores and my own understanding.
As for online learning, its still looked down upon in all industries. Not just in medicine. Probably because those currently in charge and those ultimately hiring are old (read: stubborn) in their ways. Until a well known program (Harvard, Hopkins, etc) makes a change it won't gain the respect it deserves. If a lower tier program tries to innovate, its more likely to get mocked...than called innovative.
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The financial burden of medical school too high?
How about you stop charging 50k a year for M1/M2, which is a mediocre product anyway - and let people prepare on their own or on some online course. Honestly, take 100,000 students who pay a ton of money per year and have them pay 10$ --> that's 1 million dollars to people to teach a single unified online course using standard textbooks / materials from the NBME.
This doctor shortage which was created by the old school bureaucracy is now the downfall of physicians because nurses are charging 1/2 the price, training in 1/5 the time and able to perform 1/2 of many of our services. So all the waste and inefficiency? A competitor has come to town and they are doing a damn good job. Such a good job that they've completely changed fields like anesthesia... and fields like derm or psych? They are just legislation away from being completely changed.
So yeah, we can continue to create false shortages, drive up our incomes and create a giant political mess while patients are suffering and midlevels gain power... OR we can GET BETTER, teach faster, start harnessing the power of the internet and community, use the phenomenal minds that I see in all of my colleagues. We have the choice. But the old school bureaucracy needs to start adapting and FAST.
But those educators exist. And they can teach. Look, the ACGME is trying to create a unified set of standards - well, why not just create a unified course. If everyone paid those guys to teach an online course - there would be plenty of money. If there are 100,000 students that pay 30-50k a year, that's 4 billion dollars... I don't think you need to pay teachers 4 billion, but that's quite a sum that could be leveraged to recruit a dozen or so excellent teachers. Online communities could help with questions or whatever. You could cut the price by 99% and still pay teachers an enormous amount.
Online learning is shoddy if it's done by shoddy teachers. I think anyone who has used Pathoma can attest that an online course can be VERY effective.
How about you stop charging 50k a year for M1/M2, which is a mediocre product anyway - and let people prepare on their own or on some online course. Honestly, take 100,000 students who pay a ton of money per year and have them pay 10$ --> that's 1 million dollars to people to teach a single unified online course using standard textbooks / materials from the NBME.
This doctor shortage which was created by the old school bureaucracy is now the downfall of physicians because nurses are charging 1/2 the price, training in 1/5 the time and able to perform 1/2 of many of our services. So all the waste and inefficiency? A competitor has come to town and they are doing a damn good job. Such a good job that they've completely changed fields like anesthesia... and fields like derm or psych? They are just legislation away from being completely changed.
So yeah, we can continue to create false shortages, drive up our incomes and create a giant political mess while patients are suffering and midlevels gain power... OR we can GET BETTER, teach faster, start harnessing the power of the internet and community, use the phenomenal minds that I see in all of my colleagues. We have the choice. But the old school bureaucracy needs to start adapting and FAST.
But those educators exist. And they can teach. Look, the ACGME is trying to create a unified set of standards - well, why not just create a unified course. If everyone paid those guys to teach an online course - there would be plenty of money. If there are 100,000 students that pay 30-50k a year, that's 4 billion dollars... I don't think you need to pay teachers 4 billion, but that's quite a sum that could be leveraged to recruit a dozen or so excellent teachers. Online communities could help with questions or whatever. You could cut the price by 99% and still pay teachers an enormous amount.
Online learning is shoddy if it's done by shoddy teachers. I think anyone who has used Pathoma can attest that an online course can be VERY effective.
