DEI is ruining UCLA. Seems the DEI pendulum swings too far the wrong way.

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makemoney2024 said:
Well it’s easy to do a search where she has been referenced in my posts and see all the info given there. Not rocket science.
You are welcome. Hehe
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The more I read your posts, the more I am convinced you are the one and only chocomorsel.
 
BLADEMDA said:
“(U)nder our Constitution, race is irrelevant, as the Court acknowledges. In fact, all racial categories are little more than stereotypes, suggesting that immutable characteristics somehow conclusively determine a person’s ideology, beliefs, and abilities. Of course, that is false,” he wrote.

“Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” Roberts continued.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas delivered a concurring opinion to provide an “originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution,” he wrote.

While still acknowledging the presence of racial discrimination, Thomas opined that under the 14th Amendment, the law disregards racial distinctions.
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"Racial classifications call for strict judicial scrutiny. Nonetheless, the purpose of overcoming substantial, chronic minority underrepresentation in the medical profession is sufficiently important to justify petitioner's remedial use of race."

"I agree with the judgment of the Court only insofar as it permits a university to consider the race of an applicant in making admissions decisions. I do not agree that petitioner's admissions program violates the Constitution. For it must be remembered that, during most of the past 200 years, the Constitution, as interpreted by this Court, did not prohibit the most ingenious and pervasive forms of discrimination against the Negro. Now, when a State acts to remedy the effects of that legacy of discrimination, I cannot believe that this same Constitution stands as a barrier."

"The position of the Negro today in America is the tragic but inevitable consequence of centuries of unequal treatment. Measured by any benchmark of comfort or achievement, meaningful equality remains a distant dream for the Negro. A Negro child today has a life expectancy which is shorter by more than five years than that of a white child. The Negro child's mother is over three times more likely to die of complications in childbirth, and the infant mortality rate for Negroes is nearly twice that for whites. The median income of the Negro family is only 60% that of the median of a white family, and the percentage of Negroes who live in families with incomes below the poverty line is nearly four times greater than that of whites."

- Thurgood Marshall (the Justice who Clarence Thomas replaced), Regents of California v Bakke 1977

Today, black Americans still have a life expectancy 3.6 years less than white Americans. Black women are still over 3 times as likely to die from childbirth complications as white women. Black infant mortality is now over twice what it is for white children (2.4x). Median white income is ~$78,000 while median black income is ~$48,000 (61%). I can't find the last specific percentages easily, but 19.5% of black people are below the poverty line, whereas only 8.1% for white people.
 
aneftp said:
So what if data gets release that proves dei shady admissions for under causes bad grades on self exams and usmle scores

The dei propaganda machine still will argue grades don’t make good or bad doctors. They will still write a bottom 1/3 of the class dei med school graduate still provides better outcomes if they treat people of the same race.

We might as well expand this and have dei arnp treating primary care of white/asian male doctors because arnp dei provider can relate better. The possibilities for healthcare outcome based research is endless. The aamc and gmc council would have blood on their hands if we can prove arnp who is black treats black patients better than white and Asian male doctors.
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Just to be clear, you have no evidence dei is the problem at UCLA and you are basing this whole thing off feelings.
 
ASA6 said:
Just to be clear, you have no evidence dei is the problem at UCLA and you are basing this whole thing off feelings.
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It’s happening. It’s happens for decades with under qualified students. JAMA last year already published that in general. Black students have a significant drop out rate in MD PhD programs.

jamanetwork.com

Racial and Ethnic Identity and MD-PhD Training Program Attrition

This cohort study analyzes the attrition rates of students from MD-PhD training programs by race and ethnicity.
jamanetwork.com jamanetwork.com

Of course you will say that’s just MD PhD programs. And not just MD programs. So it doesn’t apply. But open your eyes for once.


Look. I think we do need a diverse physician community. I’ve never denied that. I do think a black patient feels more comfortable seeing a black physician. A female patient feels more comfortable seeing a female ob/gyn (though i think traditionally male ob gyn are better at gyn surgery in my 20 plus years experience in the real world.

I see things both ways. But schools who admit students who are behind the 8 ball already. Need to better prepare these borderline students. That’s the real failure of ucla and other schools. Does it hurt people feelings they were admitted under a different criteria? Maybe. But it’s tough love. Put them in the equivalent of the nba g league. Maybe. Takes them one extra year. But focus on these students admitted with lower scores and grades. Med school is not “hard”. It requires a lot of effort. We all put in the effort. But under qualified candidates need to put in even more effort. And schools need to do a better job at that. And that’s the real failure of ucla staff.
 
aneftp said:
I see things both ways. But schools who admit students who are behind the 8 ball already. Need to better prepare these borderline students. That’s the real failure of ucla and other schools. Does it hurt people feelings they were admitted under a different criteria? Maybe. But it’s tough love. Put them in the equivalent of the nba g league. Maybe.
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If this was a serious and dedicated movement within the medical profession I would be able to take this idea seriously.

What's to stop you from just saying there is affirmative action in the medical school "g league" if there is a relatively high percentage of black students in it? Everything that you've expressed here would suggest that you would be just as opposed to affirmative action in such a program as well.
 
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aneftp said:
It’s happening. It’s happens for decades with under qualified students. JAMA last year already published that in general. Black students have a significant drop out rate in MD PhD programs.

jamanetwork.com

Racial and Ethnic Identity and MD-PhD Training Program Attrition

This cohort study analyzes the attrition rates of students from MD-PhD training programs by race and ethnicity.
jamanetwork.com jamanetwork.com

Of course you will say that’s just MD PhD programs. And not just MD programs. So it doesn’t apply. But open your eyes for once.


Look. I think we do need a diverse physician community. I’ve never denied that. I do think a black patient feels more comfortable seeing a black physician. A female patient feels more comfortable seeing a female ob/gyn (though i think traditionally male ob gyn are better at gyn surgery in my 20 plus years experience in the real world.

I see things both ways. But schools who admit students who are behind the 8 ball already. Need to better prepare these borderline students. That’s the real failure of ucla and other schools. Does it hurt people feelings they were admitted under a different criteria? Maybe. But it’s tough love. Put them in the equivalent of the nba g league. Maybe. Takes them one extra year. But focus on these students admitted with lower scores and grades. Med school is not “hard”. It requires a lot of effort. We all put in the effort. But under qualified candidates need to put in even more effort. And schools need to do a better job at that. And that’s the real failure of ucla staff.
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aneftp said:
It’s happening. It’s happens for decades with under qualified students. JAMA last year already published that in general. Black students have a significant drop out rate in MD PhD programs.

jamanetwork.com

Racial and Ethnic Identity and MD-PhD Training Program Attrition

This cohort study analyzes the attrition rates of students from MD-PhD training programs by race and ethnicity.
jamanetwork.com jamanetwork.com

Of course you will say that’s just MD PhD programs. And not just MD programs. So it doesn’t apply. But open your eyes for once.


Look. I think we do need a diverse physician community. I’ve never denied that. I do think a black patient feels more comfortable seeing a black physician. A female patient feels more comfortable seeing a female ob/gyn (though i think traditionally male ob gyn are better at gyn surgery in my 20 plus years experience in the real world.

I see things both ways. But schools who admit students who are behind the 8 ball already. Need to better prepare these borderline students. That’s the real failure of ucla and other schools. Does it hurt people feelings they were admitted under a different criteria? Maybe. But it’s tough love. Put them in the equivalent of the nba g league. Maybe. Takes them one extra year. But focus on these students admitted with lower scores and grades. Med school is not “hard”. It requires a lot of effort. We all put in the effort. But under qualified candidates need to put in even more effort. And schools need to do a better job at that. And that’s the real failure of ucla staff.
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Ok sure, 8% vs 4%, definitely significant, but again you really keep begging the question here. UCLA hasn't changed the percentage of black students between 2020 and 2024, so how do you arrive at the conclusion that DEI is the reason for the high failure rate? You are just going off of feelings right?
 
Gern Blansten said:
If you’re fishing for a compliment, I would be cautious.
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Clearly she ruffled feathers from what people described a while back. And this is a board with presumably above average IQs. IOW I can put two and two together.
 
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ASA6 said:
Just to be clear, you have no evidence dei is the problem at UCLA and you are basing this whole thing off feelings.
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DEI was part of the problem at UCLA. The other part was the change to the one year basic science curriculum. The weaker medical students, many of whom were DEI admissions, struggled far more to pass their shelf exams than their White/Asian counterparts. These DEI students needed an extra "bridge" year to help with the massive amount of information presented in medical school. I suspect UCLA will need to adjust the way it teaches the basic sciences as well as allow students more time to prep for the shelf exams.

The legality of the DEI program itself is an issue based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the recent Scotus ruling in 2023. Plus, California has outlawed raced based admissions to its schools. I guess lawsuits will be the way to settle this issue at UCLA.
 
BLADEMDA said:
DEI was part of the problem at UCLA. The other part was the change to the one year basic science curriculum. The weaker medical students, many of whom were DEI admissions, struggled far more to pass their shelf exams than their White/Asian counterparts. These DEI students needed an extra "bridge" year to help with the massive amount of information presented in medical school. I suspect UCLA will need to adjust the way it teaches the basic sciences as well as allow students more time to prep for the shelf exams.

The legality of the DEI program itself is an issue based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the recent Scotus ruling in 2023. Plus, California has outlawed raced based admissions to its schools. I guess lawsuits will be the way to settle this issue at UCLA.
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Just to add, I don't have any issues with DEI as long as they aren't taking away precious spots from more qualified candidates. So admit these 5-10 or so students per med school class. Identify them, put them in special needs programs to help them succeed. Just like any student who's borderline, schools are there to help them succeed. That's the ultimate goal. Schools don't want admitted students to fail. But instead schools have all this internal data on how DEI students perform and refused to release it. You would think if success was high, they would be proud and release these stats. They would trust me. But the left/liberals will say the schools have to keep things confidential and don't want to expose anything. That we "just don't know the real story". Sure any common person knows whats going on. It's like Harvard or the other IVY leagues for years kept Asians admissions around 18% until they were exposed and the next year asians were admitted at like a 22% rate. It's like they were called out on this and exposed. So schools will want to keep things under wrap on this. I"m surprise especially state supported schools the legislature doesn't demand an public records data on this data.

I always reflect back to college sports. A DEI admitted candidate who's under qualified (notice I didn't say unqualified, I said under qualified,) could be treated like a "walk on" in college D1 sports. You always hear announcers say "so and so is walk on" when playing. So they don't take up a real scholarship spot from a more qualified student.
 
ASA6 said:
What are you basing this on? How many more "dei admissions" were there in 2022 vs 2020?
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Is DEI the reason for switching to pass/fail? To hide the performance differences? Or is it just gen z being too soft.
 
triggermaster said:
Is DEI the reason for switching to pass/fail? To hide the performance differences? Or is it just gen z being too soft.
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I have been told it is due to peoples’ mental health. Something that some people on this board apparently don’t believe in. You know, med school stress, depression, anxiety and suicide. I don’t know the numbers but when I found out this is the answer plenty of students told me.
And also now with the pass fail, prestige of Med school is now taking a bigger role in residency acceptance. Which could obviously hurt students who are stellar but go to a mid tier or lower school. However that is measured by the powers that be.
 
triggermaster said:
Is DEI the reason for switching to pass/fail? To hide the performance differences? Or is it just gen z being too soft.
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From what I've skimmed, it seems like male med students commit suicide at lower rates that the general population, but there is some evidence that female med students are committing suicide at higher rates. Quality of evidence at this time is poor. (1)

If you're an administrator, and P/F reduces students' stress (depression/suicide risk? Maybe, maybe not.) while not significantly reducing student performance (2)(3), it would be arguably negligent to not seriously consider the transition. If you have studies that show switching to P/F results in lower performance, that would be good to see.

Again, all the usual caveats that there is a paucity of studies. I'm not trying to cherry pick here. But just place yourself in the role of a med school administration and you have parents of dead med students in the news or calling your office asking "why didn't you do more?". These are often the sons and daughters of wealthy and privileged parents we're talking about. I'm not saying pass/fail 'fixes' med student depression, but it's a step that an administration can take.

There's probably better and more nuanced takes on other forums wrt P/F.

1. Medical Student Suicide Rates: A Systematic Review of the... : Academic Medicine

2. Impact of pass/fail grading on medical students' well-being and academic outcomes - PubMed.

3. The effect of pass/fail grading and weekly quizzes on first-year students' performances and satisfaction - PubMed
 
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makemoney2024 said:
I have been told it is due to peoples’ mental health. Something that some people on this board apparently don’t believe in. You know, med school stress, depression, anxiety and suicide. I don’t know the numbers but when I found out this is the answer plenty of students told me.
And also now with the pass fail, prestige of Med school is now taking a bigger role in residency acceptance. Which could obviously hurt students who are stellar but go to a mid tier or lower school. However that is measured by the powers that be.
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Think about it. If someone is stressed. And lives at at stake. Do you really want them being ur doctor?

Like I stated. It’s not me being mean. But if you are so stressed out on school work. You really have no business in this profession.

If you answer hospital applications that you had to take time off from work or school due to mental health issues. They won’t hire you. So the real professional world. People won’t hire lots of people with mental health issues.
 
makemoney2024 said:
I have been told it is due to peoples’ mental health. Something that some people on this board apparently don’t believe in. You know, med school stress, depression, anxiety and suicide. I don’t know the numbers but when I found out this is the answer plenty of students told me.
And also now with the pass fail, prestige of Med school is now taking a bigger role in residency acceptance. Which could obviously hurt students who are stellar but go to a mid tier or lower school. However that is measured by the powers that be.
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If they can’t do the work and maintain mental health they are either naturally too soft or they’ve been coddled into softness their whole lives or both. Either way they aren’t suited to a profession with unavoidable stress and the requirement to perform under stress.

If they are switching to P/F because of ‘mental health,’ they are just kicking the can down the road to residency to actually be demanding or worse clinical practice. I can’t imagine growing up with victimhood and safe spaces and then one day you’re an adult and there’s no one left to baby you.
 
triggermaster said:
If they can’t do the work and maintain mental health they are either naturally too soft or they’ve been coddled into softness their whole lives or both. Either way they aren’t suited to a profession with unavoidable stress and the requirement to perform under stress.

If they are switching to P/F because of ‘mental health,’ they are just kicking the can down the road to residency to actually be demanding or worse clinical practice. I can’t imagine growing up with victimhood and safe spaces and then one day you’re an adult and there’s no one left to baby you.
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Bro. Many medical specialties are just not that stressful. Med students self select tremendously not just based on scores but also personality and vibes.

You're acting like we're losing a generation of pathologists and outpatient pediatricians due to changing a grading system. Plenty of med students still became pathologists when they were getting D's instead of P's. (Not to pick on path but they don't even see patients.)
 
triggermaster said:
Is DEI the reason for switching to pass/fail? To hide the performance differences? Or is it just gen z being too soft.
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More begging the question. Do you have an actual answer?

To your question, "is it just Gen z being too soft" has the same energy as boomers complaining about participation trophies when they created them. Did Gen Z come up with the pass fail system? Are they the administrators? For what it's worth my med school was pass/fail back in 2006. This is not new.
 
rowsdower88 said:
From what I've skimmed, it seems like male med students commit suicide at lower rates that the general population, but there is some evidence that female med students are committing suicide at higher rates. Quality of evidence at this time is poor. (1)

If you're an administrator, and P/F reduces students' stress (depression/suicide risk? Maybe, maybe not.) while not significantly reducing student performance (2)(3), it would be arguably negligent to not seriously consider the transition. If you have studies that show switching to P/F results in lower performance, that would be good to see.

Again, all the usual caveats that there is a paucity of studies. I'm not trying to cherry pick here. But just place yourself in the role of a med school administration and you have parents of dead med students in the news or calling your office asking "why didn't you do more?". I'm not saying pass/fail 'fixes' med student depression, but it's a step that an administration can take.

There's probably better and more nuanced takes on different forums wrt P/F.

1. Medical Student Suicide Rates: A Systematic Review of the... : Academic Medicine

2. Impact of pass/fail grading on medical students' well-being and academic outcomes - PubMed.

3. The effect of pass/fail grading and weekly quizzes on first-year students' performances and satisfaction - PubMed
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It seems lack of consequences on USMLE would simply delay the stress. Eventually, those persons are going to have to face the stressors of a life in the medical field. It seems that these high stakes portions of the training is what I have always considered as part of the process to get people mentally prepared for the field of medicine, especially the higher stakes fields that deal with life and death on a regular basis. Imagine the stress of going into practice as a physician on your own when you do not feel prepared.
I worry that all of the changes that have occurred in medical training in the past 25 years have moved towards making it easier, while at the same time, the nursing field has increased the time needed to get advanced degrees (not necessarily the difficulty-just filled it with busy work "doctoral" classroom activity).
Nursing advanced degrees are claiming equivalency. It is pretty much a slam dunk right now to argue the ridiculousness of that claim, but with every change that is made to be more accommodating, the less the difference in perception between DNP and MD. For that reason, I really like the high stakes exams and the long hours that teach people how to deal with the issues they will face in the real world. The real world does not have any duty hour rules.
It can be eye opening when a newly minted residency grad goes out to their new job and has to immediately take a 72 hour weekend call where they actually work the majority of it. There is an old adage that Malcolm Gladwell referred to in Outliers about the 10,000 hour rule for becoming an expert at a particular skill (I know there are different interpretations of the original work br Ericsson). Residents used to get to 10,000 hours during their residency training. It is now becoming more common that physicians may not reach that level until they are out in practice. I think we see it with some of our newer surgical colleagues, where it takes them a couple of years to get up to speed. I have seen it with some young anesthesiologists as well.
 
Gern Blansten said:
It seems lack of consequences on USMLE would simply delay the stress. Eventually, those persons are going to have to face the stressors of a life in the medical field. It seems that these high stakes portions of the training is what I have always considered as part of the process to get people mentally prepared for the field of medicine, especially the higher stakes fields that deal with life and death on a regular basis. Imagine the stress of going into practice as a physician on your own when you do not feel prepared.
I worry that all of the changes that have occurred in medical training in the past 25 years have moved towards making it easier, while at the same time, the nursing field has increased the time needed to get advanced degrees (not necessarily the difficulty-just filled it with busy work "doctoral" classroom activity).
Nursing advanced degrees are claiming equivalency. It is pretty much a slam dunk right now to argue the ridiculousness of that claim, but with every change that is made to be more accommodating, the less the difference in perception between DNP and MD. For that reason, I really like the high stakes exams and the long hours that teach people how to deal with the issues they will face in the real world. The real world does not have any duty hour rules.
It can be eye opening when a newly minted residency grad goes out to their new job and has to immediately take a 72 hour weekend call where they actually work the majority of it. There is an old adage that Malcolm Gladwell referred to in Outliers about the 10,000 hour rule for becoming an expert at a particular skill (I know there are different interpretations of the original work br Ericsson). Residents used to get to 10,000 hours during their residency training. It is now becoming more common that physicians may not reach that level until they are out in practice. I think we see it with some of our newer surgical colleagues, where it takes them a couple of years to get up to speed. I have seen it with some young anesthesiologists as well.
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At this point we're divorcing the discussion from what the studies say on stress/performance and going more off vibes, which is fine, but my vibes differ from your vibes.

I can recognize there is an argument to preserving the 'rite of passage' of a more stress filled med school. To maintain the prestige of a medical degree.

I can recognize that making med school less stressful might make worse residents/physicians. (Being slightly more stressed for an exam doesn't automatically mean you'll be able to better handle the stress of taking care of a patient later in life.)

I just think those claims have to be justified against some of the appreciable benefits of reducing med student/resident/physician stess. To your 10,000 hours claim, there's an argument to lengthen a residency if we're making them work fewer hours.

Edit: I read Blink in high school and couldn't tell you what it was about but I remember enjoying it.
 
mdo1738 said:
DEI leads to Death, Errors, and Incompetence. There is precisely one study from about 20 years ago that shows the mythical “healthcare disparities” are modestly improved by having a doctor of the same race in one very specific scenario. Not real compelling. And definitely not compelling enough to take away spots from qualified applicants to give to those who are less capable.
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Don't underestimate how compelling those isolated meaningless studies are to people that simply want to make an illogical point.
 
feel69 said:
Blaming the problems of UCLA mainly on DEI is laughable. The true problem of medical education now is the university's reluctance to fail students and foster a competitive environment. Pre-clinical curriculum has been pass-fail, and so is step 1 now. And it is likely clerkships and step 2 are going that way too. Data has shown pass rates for Step 1 have tanked because going pass/fail has likely taken the fire that drives students to do well. Not the "DEI" boogeyman
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So what are the DEI vs nonDEI stats at UCLA since you seem to confidently know the answer. Please share
 
pgg said:
The sports analogy is idiotic and you (should) know it.

Obviously competence in a sport like basketball is highly dependent and predictable from an array of objectively measurable physical attributes and testable skills. There is a SMALL pool of athletic talent that can succeed at that level.

The truth is that even the most charitable race-based admission to medical school is still very likely to be capable of doing the work. There is a LARGE pool of academic talent that can succeed and become doctors. In the aggregate, you'll see more board failures from the matriculants with lower stats, but this may be an acceptable outcome for the system, given the goals of the system.

Goals that don't necessarily include fairness to the hopes and dreams of undergrads who want to be doctors. There is a compelling argument against affirmative action (and its thinly disguised successor policies that achieve the same effect) - unfairness to academically superior applicants who lose out. However many or few of them there may be.

But put away this bull**** argument about Asians and basketball scholarships. It's a dumb argument that weakens an otherwise defensible position.


Now, if you want to argue that college sports are a racket and a moneymaker that shouldn't have any connection at all to academic admission to those institutions, we could probably find some common ground. They're pro athletes and they should be paid pro athlete money via pro athlete contracts. If some idiot who's an amazing basketball player wants to wear a Duke jersey and play for that professional franchise (that's what it is) we shouldn't have to pretend he's leaving the court after practice to go meet his chemistry study partners. This fantasy lip service to "student athletes" when it comes to NCAA basketball is ridiculous.
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Too summarize... that's complete bull****

With 200,000 medical error deaths a year I would simply say athletic scrutiny is more out in the open and not buried from view like medical incompetence. And that's only errors. Add who knows how many more from just inferior but "acceptable" practice.
 
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rowsdower88 said:
At this point we're divorcing the discussion from what the studies say on stress/performance and going more off vibes, which is fine, but my vibes differ from your vibes.

I can recognize there is an argument to preserving the 'rite of passage' of a more stress filled med school. To maintain the prestige of a medical degree.

I can recognize that making med school less stressful might make worse residents/physicians. (Being slightly more stressed for an exam doesn't automatically mean you'll be able to better handle the stress of taking care of a patient later in life.)

I just think those claims have to be justified against some of the appreciable benefits of reducing med student/resident/physician stess. To your 10,000 hours claim, there's an argument to lengthen a residency if we're making them work fewer hours.

Edit: I read Blink in high school and couldn't tell you what it was about but I remember enjoying it.
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Understood. Thanks. I like all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff. It is sometimes a bit of soft science, but he always seems to make some really good points. I believe that the 10,000 hours example was from "Outliers" and not "Blink" just as a clarification for anyone who may seek it out. It is a really good read. He has some on the internet who think they have debunked the 10,000 hour rule, but the point is still clear, it takes focused practice and directed learning to become an expert. Some may do it in fewer hours, but others may take far longer. The 10,000 hour number is somewhat of an arbitrary best guess at the average time required.
 
Handoffs errors due to the 80 hour work week rules have become common. So doing less hours has not exactly made things safer.

So idiotic devised handoff paperwork to sign out patients even in anesthesia

Just keep it simple. Continuity of care matters more. That’s in a way means MD only anesthesia is likely the safest route of anesthesia where doc finishes the case.
 
kidthor said:
Yes, it would clearly be better to work more than 80 hours a week to avoid handoffs… for safety.
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to be fair, both systems (long hours with tired, but knowing physicians vs fewer hours and more hand-offs) are unsafe, but has anyone actually compared the two to determine which is MORE unsafe?
 
Not sure why UCLA went P/F, but that seems to be a common thread among schools that switch to a one year pre clinical track and put fresh M2s into clerkships. Personally I think this makes a lot of sense since they are still very much preclinical students despite physically being on the wards each day. They also tend to have more required didactics on rotation to augment their meager basic science exposure in the first year, and thus are absent from the wards more often than traditional M3s. Not sure about ucla, but my institution kept graded rotations but only in M3/M4.

As for DEI stats on rotations, very closely guarded information for obvious reasons. I’ve seen this info personally at two institutions (neither UCLA) and it mirrors what you see elsewhere: URMs doing much worse than their counterparts, and in the 2 schools I saw, this was due primarily to the shelf exam rather than rotation evals when the data were broken down. One school altered the weight of the shelf to increase number of URMs getting honors and the other added some additional didactic time on rotations and made sure weaker students weren’t taking things like surgery and IM in early M3 blocks.

I moved on before getting to see how well the changes worked. I suspect the weight shift probably worked best at balancing the pass and honors numbers a bit since it’s just a math trick.
 
kidthor said:
Yes, it would clearly be better to work more than 80 hours a week to avoid handoffs… for safety.
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It’s been proven the 80 hr work week doesn’t improve safety. The smartest people in the room thought that was a good idea mainly has a consequence of that New York City death of the 18 year old at
The hands of “tired” residents in mid 1980s

It just leads to more hand off errors with shift work.

“ These results mirror prior studies which have failed to observe an improvement in patient outcomes with reduced resident work hours, suggesting that limiting physician work hours will not be sufficient to augment safety“

psnet.ahrq.gov

Patient safety in the era of the 80-hour workweek. | PSNet

Regulations intended to reduce resident physicians' work hours have been accompanied by controversy since their introduction in 2003, which mandated an 80-hour workweek for residents. To determine the impact of duty-hours limits on patient safety, researchers evaluated Patient Safety Indicators...
psnet.ahrq.gov psnet.ahrq.gov

Behind paywall

www.bostonglobe.com

Rethink the 80-hour workweek for medical trainees - The Boston Globe

In an industry struggling with burnout, it is worth questioning whether such long hours remain appropriate.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Newer articles.

Newer generation are just weak minded. Pass/fail
Mental health issues
“Weak” as my even more senior colleagues in their early 60s tell the new generation of surgery residents. Than the surgery residents call acgme office say they get abused by senior Anesthesia attendings. You can’t make this up. Cause their feelings were hurt. And yes. It was a couple of DEI surgery residents complaining
 
We'llBeDoneIn15Minutes said:
Don't underestimate how compelling those isolated meaningless studies are to people that simply want to make an illogical point.
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1.jpg
 
  • Haha
Reactions: pgg
ASA6 said:
More begging the question. Do you have an actual answer?

To your question, "is it just Gen z being too soft" has the same energy as boomers complaining about participation trophies when they created them. Did Gen Z come up with the pass fail system? Are they the administrators? For what it's worth my med school was pass/fail back in 2006. This is not new.
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That’s not what begging the question means.
 
aneftp said:
Yup. Very open about it. Next question
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Wait I just realized you said residents. So they passed medical school and usmle, and got admitted to med school at least 6 years ago. So when they said they were "dei residents" did you mean they were admitted to med school as part of a dei program, or residency? Or both? How do you know? Were you on the residency match committee for the surgery department where they discussed them? What do you mean they were "open about it"?
 
ASA6 said:
Wait I just realized you said residents. So they passed medical school and usmle, and got admitted to med school at least 6 years ago. So when they said they were "dei residents" did you mean they were admitted to med school as part of a dei program, or residency? Or both? How do you know? Were you on the residency match committee for the surgery department where they discussed them? What do you mean they were "open about it"?
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DEI applies to all types of workforces even into residencies.

Traditionally white and Asian male dominated competitive surgery residencies like neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery and even interventional radiology. They are matching DEI candidates as well. So the whites and Asian males are essentially competing against themselves. While DEI med students compete on a different g league level criteria talent level for the same nba level league entry.
 
pgg said:
Oh, I'd fail any of those exams too, and probably the USMLE Step 1 if I took it today. That doesn't mean I didn't benefit from learning all of those things.

Some of the benefit is also in training physicians to think like scientists.



Couldn't disagree more. If the only difference between CRNAs and anesthesiologists is that our residency was more "rigorous" then the gap between a new grad anesthesiologist and an experienced CRNA would be essentially nil. It's all just reps and sets, right? Background education doesn't matter, right? (There are some people, mostly CRNAs, who believe this.)

Give yourself some credit. You understand that difficult pathology and are able to manage it better because of what you learned in medical school.

Neither of us could draw the Krebs cycle right now, but the breadth and depth of our understanding of biochemistry is far greater than any RN's, and that knowledge - and the path we took to acquire it, even if the details are fuzzy now - shaped how we think, how we understand disease, and how we practice medicine.
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Maybe. Then again anesthesia is unique in that it is very possible for an attending to perform at a CRNA level and have a long and successful career. Our “customers” (the surgeons) really don’t expect anything more than to put the patient to sleep and wake em up. The less questions and hassles, the better. Even the smartest med school graduate will eventually end up playing down to the level of the competition…..
 
P/F in the preclinical years is fine and appropriate. Stressing letter grades is totally pointless. Most students getting into medical school already have plenty of experience stressing out over letter grades before they even set foot on campus. It doesn’t help alleviate future stress or prepare them for the rigors of clinical years. My life as attending is far less stressful than my life as med student/resident.

The volume is way more in modern medicine is way higher than in previous generations of med education: more technical pharm, more molecular genetics and biochem, more detailed physiology, more antibiotics/antivirals. All to be learned on a compressed timeline. This process is actually pretty stressful unto itself.

I had P/F as a med student. Average scores on exams were very solid/high (unless the exam was really poor quality). Even with P/F it is NO cakewalk.
 
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ucladoc2b said:
P/F in the preclinical years is fine and appropriate. Stressing letter grades is totally pointless. Most students getting into medical have plenty of experience stressing out over letter grades before they even set foot on campus. It doesn’t help alleviate future stress or prepare them for the rigors of clinical years. My life as attending is far less stressful than my life as med student/resident.

The volume is way more in modern medicine is way higher than in previous generations of med education: more technical pharm, more molecular genetics and biochem, more detailed physiology, more antibiotics/antivirals. All to be learned on a compressed timeline. This process is actually pretty stressful unto itself.

I had P/F as a med student. Average scores on exams were very solid/high (unless the exam was really poor quality). Even with P/F it is NO cakewalk.
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The issue is why p/f for step 1?

And not step 2? Make it all steps. Blur the lines.

That is a telling sign.
 
Old School MD here. I still think the "classic" Curriculum of 2 years basic science is the best way to go. The amount of material today is FAR MORE than it was in my day, yet the schools expect the students to learn it in 1 year. Second, 2 years of Clinical work is enough to prepare you for residency. Residency is where you learn your trade. Med School is where you learn the science behind your trade.

Also, P/F is fine as long as you have the SCORES from Step 1 and Step 2 to compare you to your cohorts around the country. Yale Med vs Arkansas State means the kid from Arkansas is already at a huge disadvantage. Throw in DEI and P/F on the both Steps and that WHITE/ASIAN Male from Arkansas is pretty much screwed.

ZERO chance I would have match at a top 10 Anesthesiology Residency today based on a P/F system and DEI "initiatives" of today. I would be fortunate to secure a mid tier program at best, and maybe without a score from Step 2 I would end up at a bottom tier program.
 
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aneftp said:
The issue is why p/f for step 1?

And not step 2? Make it all steps. Blur the lines.

That is a telling sign.
Click to expand...

The whole emphasis on USMLE scores is a recent phenomenon driven primarily by the ERAS overapplication mess. Period. Most posters on this board had absolutely inconsequential scores that were not even considered for residency.

Additionally, the average score has been climbing a lot over a short time so exams aren’t even comparable anymore. A solid score for a MD/PhD student who goes to the lab for a few years becomes dramatically worse (even though they scores solidly).

Additionally, there is currently a significant scandal being investigated regarding IMGs from certain countries and recall banks. So these scores really aren’t cracked up to be anything.

The exams were designed for pass/fail. They are being misused.
 
ucladoc2b said:
The whole emphasis on USMLE scores is a recent phenomenon driven primarily by the ERAS overapplication mess. Period. Most posters on this board had absolutely inconsequential scores that were not even considered for residency.

Additionally, the average score has been climbing a lot over a short time so exams aren’t even comparable anymore. A solid score for a MD/PhD student who goes to the lab for a few years becomes dramatically worse (even though they scores solidly).

Additionally, there is currently a significant scandal being investigated regarding IMGs from certain countries and recall banks. So these scores really aren’t cracked up to be anything.

The exams were designed for pass/fail. They are being misused.
Click to expand...
They level the playing field for 2/3 of all White/Asian males competing for the limited number of residency positions. Without a Step score those students won't have the same chance at the best programs as their elite med school cohorts. The DEI applicants are in a different pool of applicants for residency positions.
 
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