Anything as challenging/rigorous as an MD?

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Has anyone here experienced any other degree in the realm of higher education that is as or more challenging/rigorous than an MD?

I know that some of us here have doctorates or terminal degrees in other fields so I was wondering how they felt their previous graduate educational experience stacked up against their medical education experience...

After finally starting my first year of medical school, I can definitely say that my previous graduate education can't hold a candle to what is expected of an individual in an MD program just in terms of intensity or amount of information...
 
Medical school is B.U.D.S. (Navy Seal bootcamp) for the mind.
 
Doctoral level work in physics or astrophysics would probably beat it. Medical students have a habit of thinking medical school is the most difficult endeavor anyone could participate in. 🙄
 
Except if you make a mistake in your astrophysics calculations no one dies.
 
Maybe maybe not, but that doesn't mean medicine is more intellectually difficult.

It's all a matter of what type of difficulty you measure. Medicine isn't as physically difficult as, say, SEAL training. It also isn't as intellectually difficult as theoretical astrophysics.

I guess it may be more mentally difficult and stressful than astrophysics. Maybe more so than intense military training, but I wouldn't go that far without empirical data.
 
Comparing graduate and professional programs is an apples-and-oranges sort of deal. A friend in my econ grad program told me that doctoral economics is hands-down more difficult than anything he did in med school (ask me in a year and I will give you my opinion on it), but while economics is conceptually difficult, it does not demand that you retain volumes of information. Depending on your strengths (say, if you have trouble memorizing and adore math), you might find econ much easier than medicine. If you dislike writing, you might find a literature degree harder than the MD.

I've had easily a score of med students tell me that medicine isn't hard, just hard work. I think you would be hard-pressed to find another discipline whose training requires more hours per year of work, but plenty of fields are "harder" in the intellectual sense.
 
As a former physics graduate student and current medical student I would say that graduate level physics work is harder than anything in medical school. But, medical school seems to demand more from you...if that makes any sense. I think it has more to do with the expected level of professionalism that medical school demands.
 
I hear parenting is a mite difficult.
 
parenting young children, hands-down. especially while you're working part-time to feed them.
 
Originally posted by carrigallen
parenting young children, hands-down. especially while you're working part-time to feed them.
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Amen to that ... 😛
 
I've had this discussion many times with friends. It doesn't really go anywhere b/c its all about lots of memorizing and some thinking(clinical medicine) versus lots of thinking & some memorizing (physics, math, cs). However, you can do biomedical research that is as tough as physics. Medicine is just so broad a field that it cannot be lumped into one thing.
 
I think anything that matches the MD in terms of difficulty, then adds additional work, would be more difficult.

So, if you think the MD is at the top of the pinnacle, you could make the statement that there are some DO schools that are more difficult. And likewise (here comes the bombshell), the DDS/DMD degree is still more difficult.

We take the same classes as you guys, plus have additional labs in the evening, plus handle patients while still in school. You guys get internships, residencies, etc. to deal with patients. We do it while in school.

My three most recent professors (2 from the Pitt med school and 1 from the UNC med school) have all said that our curriculum is 2-3x more difficult than their med students. It's a fair argument.
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
I think anything that matches the MD in terms of difficulty, then adds additional work, would be more difficult.

So, if you think the MD is at the top of the pinnacle, you could make the statement that there are some DO schools that are more difficult. And likewise (here comes the bombshell), the DDS/DMD degree is still more difficult.

We take the same classes as you guys, plus have additional labs in the evening, plus handle patients while still in school. You guys get internships, residencies, etc. to deal with patients. We do it while in school.

My three most recent professors (2 from the Pitt med school and 1 from the UNC med school) have all said that our curriculum is 2-3x more difficult than their med students. It's a fair argument.
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No it's not, b/c DO school is a waste of time. BOOYAH!!!
 
Originally posted by QuinnNSU
I heard that getting your DO degree is as challenging/rigorous as getting your MD degree.

Q, DO
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Classic😀
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
We take the same classes as you guys, plus have additional labs in the evening, plus handle patients while still in school. You guys get internships, residencies, etc. to deal with patients. We do it while in school.
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I always thought that my OMF classmates had the screwiest scedule. Medical student one month needing countersignatures for tylenol to senior OMF residents the next month writing scripts for hydrocodone then back to medical student.

During second year it was odd seen them getting paged out of lectures to answer nursing questions etc...

I have to give them credit because when we were pulling all-nighters studying for summative exams they were trying to study while taking call, etc... So I would agree that it was definitely harder for them.
 
dental school students DO NOT take the same curriculum as med students--its apples and oranges.

Since when do dental students do rotations in internal medicine, ob/gyn, pathology, radiology, etc? Dental students are not trained on the whole body like med students are.

Of course, on the other hand, their knowledge of anatomy/physiology in the mandible/maxillofacial area is a lot better than med students, but thats to be expected. If med students had the same level of understanding of that stuff as dental students, then whats the point of even having dental school? Of course dental students have better knowledge/understanding of oral cavity stuff cause they focus on it instead of sticking their fingers into every other medical specialty.

Med students have to know a far greater variety of information than dent students do. Graduating med students are prepared to go into any specialty for further training--the same can not be said for dental students.
 
It depends on what you define "difficult" as.

Physical/Mental difficulty: Medical school and a career as a physician is probably at the bottom of the list, trumped by physically-demanding careers such as law enforcement, military service (especially those who serve in combat or in special forces, aviation, etc.), firefighting, etc. (sorry, sleep deprivation doesn't count.)

"Risky" difficult: Being a physician is probably last again. Screwing up and killing someone will only cost you some psychological trauma and maybe the end to your career, but making a mistake as a law enforcement officer, firefighter, or soldier may cost you your life.

Intellectual Difficulty: I think there may be a case here. Medical school and being a physician probably falls in the upper 25% in relation to intellectual difficulty. It is probably more difficult than doctoral-level work in philosophy or psychology, but less difficult than doctoral-level work in astrophysics or biochemistry.

As an aside, why do medical students give so much crap to the basic science professors? Do they not realize that these guys have a much more intimate working knowledge of their particular discipline, while medical students only scratch the surface? It would only make sense that if medical school is "so hard" that more in-depth knowledge of the materials covered would only be more difficult.
 
Originally posted by MacGyver
dental school students DO NOT take the same curriculum as med students--its apples and oranges.
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I don't want to belabor the point, but if I'm sitting next to you in class throughout the day, then how is it apples and oranges?
 
Originally posted by JKDMed

"Risky" difficult: Being a physician is probably last again. Screwing up and killing someone will only cost you some psychological trauma and maybe the end to your career, but making a mistake as a law enforcement officer, firefighter, or soldier may cost you your life.
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Tell that to all of the health care workers who contract infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV every year with accidental needle sticks and the like.
 
Originally posted by JKDMed

As an aside, why do medical students give so much crap to the basic science professors? Do they not realize that these guys have a much more intimate working knowledge of their particular discipline, while medical students only scratch the surface? It would only make sense that if medical school is "so hard" that more in-depth knowledge of the materials covered would only be more difficult.
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Because medical students don't go to medical school for an appreciation of basic science. They come to learn to perform the basic functions of a clinician. When professors go on and on about research and minutia not even related to physical diagnosis, prognosis, etc - it really frustrates me. Save it for the grad students.

All you seem to do is rag on medical school and medical students. You are one of the few medical students I've heard talk about how basically mindless and simplistic medical school is (and how every other profession is more "difficult") I'm starting to suspect that you wish you had gone for a PhD...
 
I don't think medicine is at all the most challenging field. As far as self discipline, maybe. It takes a ton of that to be a med student. But really, most of medicine is not that conceptually difficult. Maybe around some of the pelvic anatomy and some of our manip requires a little mental visualization, but overall it is pretty straight forward stuff, just alot of it. I was a astrophysics student as well as a grad. student in Biomed sciences. While I had MUCH more study/free time in both those fields, we dealt with concepts that were, quite frankly, above my head. I would look over at some guy next to me absorbing it like a sponge and just think- "that guy is really smart" More often in med school I look at the guy next to me and think "that guy works really hard" Not to say there aren't incredibly smart people in medicine, its just that there are more in research fields. If you are as smart as some of these folks I ran in to in research, you might be bored and beaten down by the absolute redundancy of med school. However, there are those few people (see 12 yo in above post or Dr. Albert Schweitzer (sp?)) how are smart enough to do astrophysics and play a chain smoking Russian in chess at the same time yet have a desire to help people and choose medicine. Those are the real studs.
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
ILastly, medical students may be prepared to go into any specialty after graduation, but dental students could easily do that also if the laws permitted it.
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Thats absolute crap. If you suddenly took dental students right after graduation and threw them into an internal medicine or cardiology ward, they would be absolutely lost relative to the med student colleagues.

Med students and dental students study different things. A dental student can NOT substitute for a med student and vice-versa.
 
Gavin -
at your school which classes do you take with med students? About all I know at my school is that they take gross anatomy with us, but I know they'll do more classes with the meds.

By the way, why on earth do dental students need to take gross anatomy? Do they really need to know about the innervation of the leg? If I were a dental student and taking gross, I'd be pissed! Please clue me in.
 
Originally posted by Adcadet
By the way, why on earth do dental students need to take gross anatomy? Do they really need to know about the innervation of the leg? If I were a dental student and taking gross, I'd be pissed! Please clue me in.
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I actually asked my dentist about this recently. She told me that they only took anatomy of the head and neck.
 
one of my best friends is a dental student. He summarized his degree choice (compared to mine) as "Hey, twice the pay, for half the time." 😀

Now i see why the smart people choose dentistry over medicine...too late to switch now. doh!
 
Originally posted by Adcadet
, why on earth do dental students need to take gross anatomy? Do they really need to know about the innervation of the leg? If I were a dental student and taking gross, I'd be pissed! Please clue me in.
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Why not? There are several aspects to this, so I'll try to state them as simply as possible.

1) DDS/DMDs have FULL prescription rights just as do MD/DOs. Shouldn't we know how the body works?

2) Why do opthamologists or derms have to know about innervation of the leg? Of course, med students don't know what they'll be practicing until they match, so this probably isn't a really strong reason.

3) Patients see their dentists twice as often on average as they do their primary care physicians. If we can refer pts. your direction then we ought to. It's important for us to diagnose not only oral problems but also systemic problems.

4) It helps that many systemic problems first manifest in the oral cavity.
 
Originally posted by Adcadet
Gavin -
at your school which classes do you take with med students? About all I know at my school is that they take gross anatomy with us, but I know they'll do more classes with the meds.
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At my school we don't take any classes with the med students. But many schools do. UConn, for example, has the dental and medical students combined for the first two years. The notable portion is that the dental students take lab courses in the afternoons while the medical students are out for the day.
 
Just to clarify: I'm not saying the MD isn't rigorous. I have no doubt that it is. As many of you have already posted, there are, however, many other degrees which could be considered just as rigorous.
 
Gavin, I respect everything you've said about dental school and agree that it is a difficult and rigorous course of training. The only thing that I take exception to is your opinion that the DDS and the MD/DO degrees are identical in terms of basic science.

I agree that they are extremely similar in that both require anatomy, histology, biochem, etc. In effect, the first year looks almost identical.

It is the second year, however, where you see the major differences. After looking through the curriculum of about 6 or 7 different schools online (if you want, I can post a couple for examples), I see that in each case there is not a general pharmacology class but a dental pharmacology class (often accompanied by a pain management class). Even more important is the absence of a systems pathology course (even though there seems to always be a general path and then an oral pathology course). It is systems pathology that somewhat defines medicine, so it's really hard to say that the programs are even similar in the second year without this class in the curriculum.
 
Tryin to get laid every weekend is pretty rigorous for me. My mutant mind control doesn't work all the time.
 
Originally posted by InfiniteUni
I can definitely say that my previous graduate education can't hold a candle to what is expected of an individual in an MD program just in terms of intensity or amount of information...
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Without a doubt, my PhD program in molecular pathology IS a lot more detailed scientifically than most of what med students take. I think difficulty depends on the area of science you're referring to.
 
But I think MD classes must be pretty up there in terms of difficulty. Sure, we might not get into PhD level detail, but I think we cover a broader range of subjects. We have to know a moderate amount about a lot of stuff while others, I think, have to know a lot about a narrower range of subjects. In either case, that's a large volume of material.

Anyway, I'm not so sure that it's specifically the volume that makes it tough. I think it's more the volume combined with the fast pace at which the material is presented that presents a challenge. If the same amount of material was presented over a longer period of time, it would be much easier to remember what you need to because you'd have time to cement the information in your head before you had to stuff some new, unrelated facts in there. (<-- Like that sentence. See how hard it is to follow what I'm saying when I spit everything out at once? It's not just my bad grammar. I swear!)

At least, that's what I think now at four days into the curriculum. I'll see how I feel in a few weeks/months/years.
 
"I'm smarter than you becuase my program teaches the students how the gamma widgets induce spacial field vibrations and then blah blah blah"

"Fool! Your program doesn't even teach you that sub-arachnoid rotations induce the electro-magic movement that react with the gamma widgets and cause the vibrations"

"Your all *****s. I'm in a completely different field, and using Johanna's theorum, we learn that Gamma widgets and electro-magicism doesn't even really exist"

Everyone in professional or graduate school is smart. There are probably some MD/DO's students that are smarter than some of the astrophysics grad students, and there are probably some astrophysics people who make the MD/DO students look like ******s.

Why can't we all just get along?
 
rxfudd,

I appreciate your post, but it might also be noted that not all medical schools teach a course called "systems pathology". Much of that might be covered under a semester or two of a general pathology course.

You are correct with regards to the Pharm courses. My school, although not in the same classes with med students, DOES cover systems pathology and Pharm for each system, not only dental pharm.

Still, I think your statement is mostly correct. Our second semester looks much different than that of any medical school OR any other dental school, for that matter.

Our first year (72 credit hours) is comprised of:

History of Dentistry
Public Health & Epidemiology
Introduction to Health Disciplines
Genetics
Microbiology
Musculoskeletal Systems
Integumentary Systems
Nervous System
Mind and Cognition
Endocrinology
Hematology
Cardiopulmonary System
Immunology
Metabolism
Digestive System
Urinary Systems
Reproductive Systems
Dental Radiology
Dental Materials and Instruments
Dental Pain Control
Grand Rounds
-------------------
Pharmacology
Compartments of Neck
Compartments of Head
Trigeminal
Masticatory System
Orthodontics
Dental Hard Tissues
Oral Soft Tissues
Dental Pulp
Exodontia
Clinical Medicine I
Grand Rounds II
 
Medical degrees are not difficult. It's the volume of material that's the nature of the beast.
 
ItsGavinC, it sounds like you are trying a little too hard to convince everyone that dental school is harder than medical school. I'm not saying that it is or that it isn't because I have never attended dental school and I would hate to just make up an answer. I think the only people qualified to accurately answer this question would be someone who attended both. And really, that only gives a generalization based on what schools the person attended. I have taken a few classes with dental students and I do realize that they have some classes in the afternoons whereas I only have afternoon classes 2-3 times a week. What I have noticed, however, is that my medical school class has the standard grading scale (90 and up A, 80 and up B, etc with anything below a 70 failing). However, my dental colleagues have a nice cushy grading scale that allows them to receive a C for a 60 and up. Now, this is the exact same class, yet one group is held to a higher standard than the other. This doesn't seem too fair to me. There is also a lab associated with the medical student portion of the class I'm in, however, when we are in lab, the dental students are free to do whatever they please. So at least in this case, it appears that med students are doing more work to achieve the same grade.

I am simply saying that just because someone spends more time in class, does not mean their curriculum is harder. Hell, I would gladly trade my afternoons in for the chance to be able to make a decent salary after I graduated!!

And realize that these discussions never get resolved, so why do we even bother.....👎
 
Originally posted by JKDMed
Doctoral level work in physics or astrophysics would probably beat it. Medical students have a habit of thinking medical school is the most difficult endeavor anyone could participate in. 🙄
Click to expand...
While physics may be more difficult to understand, med school is more difficult for me because of the memorization. I have a much harder time studying for boring multiple choice question tests than I ever did with physics research or studying for take-home, open-book physics tests.
 
Originally posted by KyGrlDr2B
ItsGavinC, it sounds like you are trying a little too hard to convince everyone that dental school is harder than medical school.
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Isn't that the point of this thread? I didn't start the topic, that's for sure.

Because I haven't attended medical school I, like yourself, cannot comment directly on the direct comparison.

My thoughts are coming from our professors, who fly to our campus for one week, teach their lectures, and then return home to their schools. Each of our last four professors has said the courseload they've given us is MORE difficult than what they teach their medical students and MORE difficult than what they feel their medical students go through.

These professors have been from the University of Pitt and University of North Carolina med schools.
 
Why is it that it's always DDS or DO students trying to convince everyone that their programs are more rigorous than MD programs? It is never the other way around. I suggest a slight inferiority complex.

However, there is absolutely no reason for this complex. All degree programs are highly respected, and everyone completing them, i.e. all of us, will be held in high esteem and financially secure for the rest of our lives.

That being said, in response to posts on this thread I feel forced to stand up for MD programs. It is fact that MD matriculants undergraduate GPAs are better than ANY other graduate degree program. Additionally, the MCAT is by far the most challenging admissions test out there. So please, this is not a competition.

A final question addressing the suggestion that docs and dentists are interchangeable professionals as a result of the same training. If your child experienced a medical emergency, who would you prefer to rush to their aid: a dentist or a doctor?
 
I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. Like I said, the OP posted the question. It certainly deserves some responses. I could have chosen to get an MD, but I didn't. My father is on the admissions committee for an MD school, so I'm sure I would have had a fair shot of getting in.

I NEVER suggested that physicians and dentists were interchangeable based on the same training. Such a thought is idiotic!

Which would I want in a medical emergency? Depends on the medical emergency. If I have several severe or moderate tooth fracatures, I sure as hell want a dentist nearby.

And I sure as hell wouldn't want a dermatoligist performing heart surgery.
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. Like I said, the OP posted the question. It certainly deserves some responses. I could have chosen to get an MD, but I didn't. My father is on the admissions committee for an MD school, so I'm sure I would have had a fair shot of getting in.

I NEVER suggested that physicians and dentists were interchangeable based on the same training. Such a thought is idiotic!

Which would I want in a medical emergency? Depends on the medical emergency. If I have several severe or moderate tooth fracatures, I sure as hell want a dentist nearby.

And I sure as hell wouldn't want a dermatoligist performing heart surgery.
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I wouldn't want a dermatoligist to check out any irregular moles that may arise either....sorry I couldn't resist :laugh:
 
Maybe a certain someone might find his coursework a little less challenging if he spent more time studying and less time repeating himself again and again on this thread. 😛

Of course, I guess the same thing applies to me. I think I gotta remove SDN from my bookmarks. 😳 🙁
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
Which would I want in a medical emergency? Depends on the medical emergency. If I have several severe or moderate tooth fracatures, I sure as hell want a dentist nearby.

And I sure as hell wouldn't want a dermatoligist performing heart surgery.
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You're doing some serious backpedaling here. First, it was a comparison between dentists and ALL med students/doctors, which includes every medical specialty out there.

Now, you are changing the focus.

By the way, a tooth fracture is not a medical emergency. You could easily have those problems fixed in a few days. A medical emergency is something like diabetic coma or collapsed lungs.
 
"What do you call someone who drops out of medical school?"


"A dentist!"

from Seinfeld



Relax, ItsGavinC, you're smart.
 
Your nothing but an anti-dentite
No Soup for you!
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
My father is on the admissions committee for an MD school, so I'm sure I would have had a fair shot of getting in.
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:laugh:
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
Dental school is hands down more difficult.
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C'mon. We all know that dentists are the NPs of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
 
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