Are some of you unhappy with the depth of the material?

[zinciest]

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I'm asking as a premed who's wondered about medicine for awhile. I've seen threads in this forum with med students who feel like they go over a ton of material that's kind of superficial. I was wondering if anyone feels like they're reduced to memorizing disjointed facts, and not really learning "science".

Do you feel like the actual practice of medicine will be anymore scientific, or will it be the algorithmic application of various facts you learned in med school?

I'll preemptively apologize if you think this is a stupid question.

 

[la petite mort]

I don't want to cut into people for a living. Therefore, I was more than happy that my med school decided to stop student dissections in the gross anatomy program while I was taking it, a la Cuban programs, and invest the money in new anatomy models.

 

[zinciest]

Why was this moved out of the allopathic thread??

 

[cpants]

I think it's probably more first and second year students who feel that way. You learn an enormous amount of material during the first two years, some if it disjointed, and some if it seemingly disconnected. You start to see how intertwined everything is when you study for step I and even more so when you get on the wards and start seeing what you've learned applied to medical diagnosis and treatment. You need that background knowledge. While it can be painful, it is necessary.

 

[DrMom]

I'm not sure where the OP meant to post this. I'm moving it to the allopathic forum.

 

[Inuranic]

The depth of the material varies from lecture to lecture. Sometimes we get a magic hand-wave over the material, sometimes it feels like I'm reading a Science article (i.e. we're doing Cardio now, and we'll get a cursory "Oh, when a patient with X risk factors comes in, we prefer Y bypass" without further explanation, and then the next hour we'll cover the fine details of endothelial dysfunction).

To be honest, if you want more detail than what's given, you can always go get it. If I'm unhappy with the way something is presented, I'll just go read Robbins or some other 4,000 page tome. The depth of learning is on you.

 

[derspiegel]

I believe in medicine this differs from subject to subject. Gross anatomy is just plain memorising not much deep thinking involved with the exception of a few clinical cases for practice. Renal physiology is at the other end of the spectrum.

Although the amount of theory and facts required to study during the first 2 years may seem overwhelming it is very important to establish a firm basis in pathophysiology. Someone who misses out at the start probably will never really understand the procedures carried out on the patients later on during the clinical part of the education...

 

[MossPoh]

I don't want to cut into people for a living. Therefore, I was more than happy that my med school decided to stop student dissections in the gross anatomy program while I was taking it, a la Cuban programs, and invest the money in new anatomy models.

There is little correlation between surgery and dissection aside from both being on people and using a scalpel. Until clinical years, you don't REALLY know what you want to be anyway. Why bother with various heart sounds and defects if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon? Why bother with anatomy at all if you want to be a psychiatrist? You can take this into nearly every domain. While I hated being in the anatomy lab, much of the research I've seen shows greater comprehension with dissection. It just takes so much longer and is low yield compared to other classes for boards.

 

[Gospe1]

Getting back to the original question, i felt that first year material, especially physiology, held together pretty well on its own. There was 1 story of how the body works and each organ system interacts with each other to keep the organism healthy and functioning. In M2, the facts become even more disjointed because disease is incredibly idiosyncratic and sometimes unexplainable. The important teaching points become more and more clinical and thus, multiple stories develop over personalities, place of residency, etc. For me, I try to come up with a coherent story in my mind that ties together as many diseases processes or anatomical information as possible even if it disagrees with the "preferred" explanation. As long as its not completely off the mark, I know it improves my long term memory of trivia.

If our ultimate purpose is to understand disease, then sure, we would focus on the science. Thats not the point, however. Our patients come first and its sometimes necessary to preclude logical explanations for empirical evidence. Algorithms have a bit of a bad rap. I like to think of them as covering all your bases. In the end, we'll get more than our fair share of variance that single scientific theories do not sufficient explain.

 

[la petite mort]

There is little correlation between surgery and dissection aside from both being on people and using a scalpel. Until clinical years, you don't REALLY know what you want to be anyway. Why bother with various heart sounds and defects if you want to be an orthopedic surgeon? Why bother with anatomy at all if you want to be a psychiatrist? You can take this into nearly every domain. While I hated being in the anatomy lab, much of the research I've seen shows greater comprehension with dissection. It just takes so much longer and is low yield compared to other classes for boards.

Heh heh I do want to be a psychiatrist!

I did my best not to resent gross anatomy and I actually wound up getting a decent grade.

 

[swirldog]

No complaints from me. It's all supposed to help me get to the 3rd and 4th years, so I guess it's all good and necessary.

 

[Simmy]

The thing is that alot of things will seem superficial at times when you start learning it and you will think "damn I wish I had time to get more into this because I really feel I need it and I finde it interesting". But in many many cases you will finde alot of these important things come back in several of your courses during your education.

Like my first year we barly touched menstrual cycle and I thought it was weird because it is something most doctors need to know alot about. But today I read about it in more detail in physiology, and I will damn sure have it in super-detail when I come to Gyn. Same thing happend with the autonomic nervous system. You don't learn everything at once, but you add more and more in a process of evolving to be a doctor (and after that).

This happens over and over again. Just this year I've had about electrophoresis in three different classes and repeated action potential in in at least 4-5 different seminars/lectures (God its boring lol)

 

[umean2tellme]

I've wondered how deep I've learned things so far in my first year. My school's curriculum is a little different from most. They explain it as instead of going really deep into a subject now and having you forget it later, they go over everything kinda superficially at first and as time goes on they hit you with the same material a bunch of times but deeper and from different perspectives each time. I understand that I'm goin to see most of the stuff over and over again but deeper each time, so I don't worry so much about how deep we go anymore. Gotta trust the school knows what they're talking about. I do kinda worry about not dissecting but there are dissection electives later on that I plan on taking so I won't worry about it now.

 

[Random Anesthesiologist]

I don't want to cut into people for a living. Therefore, I was more than happy that my med school decided to stop student dissections in the gross anatomy program while I was taking it, a la Cuban programs, and invest the money in new anatomy models.

I will never understand this attitude med students have.

Gross anatomy, while tedious and often boring, was one of my favorites for the vast intimate knowledge of the human body I obtained. I don't feel one can learn this as effectively by CD-ROM or similar only.

It's like driving a car on a video game vs. the real thing. At least for me.

 

[KeyzerSoze]

I will never understand this attitude med students have.

Gross anatomy, while tedious and often boring, was one of my favorites for the vast intimate knowledge of the human body I obtained. I don't feel one can learn this as effectively by CD-ROM or similar only.

It's like driving a car on a video game vs. the real thing. At least for me.

Digging through leathery, formaldehyde-reeking preserved bodies is disgusting and a massive waste of time. Hands on experience examining professionally dissected and preferably more life-like specimens, like the plasticized stuff in the Bodyworlds exhibit, would be far more worthwhile.

 

[VoiceofReason]

Digging through leathery, formaldehyde-reeking preserved bodies is disgusting and a massive waste of time. Hands on experience examining professionally dissected and preferably more life-like specimens, like the plasticized stuff in the Bodyworlds exhibit, would be far more worthwhile.

a comprehensive set of really nicely done laminated prosections would be infinitely preferable to digging around in a rotting corpse

 

[deleted263296]

I'm in my second year, and I've come to realize something. Medicine is not hard science. It's a descriptive, observational science. You show me one thing explainable, I'll show you something else that isn't. This is the reason medical students complain about superficial learning. But what I've come to accept is that it's superficial because there really is no explanation for so many things. You just have to memorize those things. (But the most painful part is figuring out what you have to memorize.) I'm not saying the first two years are all about memorization, though. There are some intellectual barriers that have to be crossed, often made more difficult by your professors, who have no idea how to teach.

 

[umean2tellme]

I'm in my second year, and I've come to realize something. Medicine is not hard science. It's a descriptive, observational science. You show me one thing explainable, I'll show you something else that isn't. This is the reason medical students complain about superficial learning. But what I've come to accept is that it's superficial because there really is no explanation for so many things. You just have to memorize those things. (But the most painful part is figuring out what you have to memorize.) I'm not saying the first two years are all about memorization, though. There are some intellectual barriers that have to be crossed, often made more difficult by your professors, who have no idea how to teach.

👍👍👍👍👍👍😀

 

[la petite mort]

I will never understand this attitude med students have.

Gross anatomy, while tedious and often boring, was one of my favorites for the vast intimate knowledge of the human body I obtained. I don't feel one can learn this as effectively by CD-ROM or similar only.

It's like driving a car on a video game vs. the real thing. At least for me.

With all courtesy, I'm glad for you, but anatomy lab didn't provide me personally with any further insight into the human body that my textbooks didn't. The cadavers bore as about as much resemblance to the real human beings that I'll have to examine someday as the crunchy brown Christmas tree that I finally remembered to drag out to the curb on January 11th. My lab instructor began every other sentence with "in theory, we'd be able to appreciate [insert just about any aspect of the living] here, but you'll just have to imagine it."

I don't mean to offend traditionalists or get into a whole thing here, but I know there are a lot of students out there who'd agree that they didn't get what they should have out of anatomy lab and not because of lack of effort or enthusiasm - the only thing that felt practical was the time spent on bones. Something needs to change.

 

[reedman]

i am unhappy with the depth of my knowledge, not the material. there are thousands of details to know.

 

[sprinkibrio]

I'm asking as a premed who's wondered about medicine for awhile. I've seen threads in this forum with med students who feel like they go over a ton of material that's kind of superficial. I was wondering if anyone feels like they're reduced to memorizing disjointed facts, and not really learning "science".

Do you feel like the actual practice of medicine will be anymore scientific, or will it be the algorithmic application of various facts you learned in med school?

I'll preemptively apologize if you think this is a stupid question.

MS1 and 2 you learn the language of medicine. It's like how are you supposed to read Spanish literature if you don't know Spanish grammar? Anyways, everything you learn MS2 is useful and most things MS1 are too. If anything, you learn it too deep. You'll see.... it's like do I really need to know the exact mechanism of every drug like we do in pharm? Not really, what's really useful is knowing the application and dose and duration, but you don't have that solidified until intern year. True clinical medicine is extremely scientific an it is something that takes YEARS to grasp, but how are you supposed to do medicine if you haven't memorized a bunch of new descriptive words, diseasese, drugs, and presentations?

 

[montessori2md]

One thing you need to realize is that the med school curriculums vary, but all are intended to offer you the information in layers, so dissatisfaction in yr 1 need not be too shallow in yr 4. At most schools (mine included), the first year is mostly "normal". The second year is mostly path, dx, tmt, and adds another layer of understanding to the phys, anatomy, biochem -partly because you are reviewing all of that in order to understand normal (pretty tough to discuss path without knowing what it differs from) and partly because the abnormal helps you to deepen your understanding of the normal structures and function.
That understanding will be further deepened in 3rd and 4th year -there are diagnostic details we are not expected to focus on until we are on the wards, and then there are the realities of actual practice to incorporate as well. The progressive layering of information continues throughout the post-graduate years and "good" MDs continue post-grad.

Another thing to realize is, you can lead a horse to water.....
There will always be docs who will believe that certain Rxs should be given, or certain tests/tmts are necessary, despite lots of clinical and scientific evidence to the contrary. So regardless of how much science the school throws at us, there will still be inadequacy of knowledge because MDs are humans, and our emotional brains can screw with us and we forget stuff.

Anatomy: to each his own. It would be nice if you could choose, unfortunately, that's not the reality. Myself, I like partial dissection -some prosections of actual preserved cadavers + limited dissection, mostly because you spend so much time cutting away fat and making structures visible that you lose time learning. Particularly for the musculoskeletal component -it's just so time consuming to dissect all that. I think at my school that would be easily solved by having the PT students perform that portion of the dissection, and us just using the cadavers to study, vs dissecting them. I like the laminated models because they make it so much easier to translate from 3-D to CT/MRI style imaging, which is very important. Also, they are great for studying vessels because of they way that they can preserve the arterial tree. I have not seen laminated structures that really make it possible to deal with the musculoskeletal system in a way that really allows you to experience all the insertions, relationships, as well as cadavers, though.