Did anybody else once think you learned your specialty in med school?

[TheBiologist]

---

Members do not see this ad.

So I'll be honest, it wasn't until my sophomore year of undergrad that I learned everyone does the same thing and takes the same classes in medical school, and that it's not until your residency where you become a surgeon or psychiatrist etc.

My family and friends thought the same thing. Anybody else?

EDIT: shoot I meant to make this a poll lol, can you change this

 

[Winged Scapula]

Yep, my father said to me, upon graduation from medical school, "now you'll be making a great salary". My family had no idea about residency and fellowship.

 

[NickNaylor]

You'll have some input into your medical school schedule in your final year, but yes, medical school essentially prepares you for the training of whatever it is you're going to be. It does not prepare you to be an independently practicing physician.

 

[LizzyM]

I've been teaching in medical school for several decades but until recently I never saw the whole beast -- it is slowly dawning on me that despite studying like crazy, the medical students are really only learning a little of what they'll need to know as practitioners and practitioners prune what it is that they need to know and discard much of what they learn in medical school that is no longer necessary for their area of practice while they go deeper into their area of specialization.

 

[sinombre]

I've been teaching in medical school for several decades but until recently I never saw the whole beast -- it is slowly dawning on me that despite studying like crazy, the medical students are really only learning a little of what they'll need to know as practitioners and practitioners prune what it is that they need to know and discard much of what they learn in medical school that is no longer necessary for their area of practice while they go deeper into their area of specialization.

It's true. With each new chapter in medicine it becomes obvious how little you actually know. You start 3rd year and realize you know close to nothing about how clinical medicine actually works. And then you start intern year and realize how little you know about actually managing patients. And it's even more exaggerated in surgery where you are basically starting from scratch again because of how little about surgery you learn in medical school.

That said, I don't think the information learned in the preclinical years of medical school, even if it will never be used directly, ever becomes "no longer necessary."

The vast majority of what you learn in the preclinical years is forgotten, in some sense. But even forgotten facts that contribute to a retained big picture are still necessary, sort of like ingredients that are used to cook a meal. So even though the vast majority of the students you teach probably forget 90% of what you teach them, what you teach them is used to synthesize a medical foundation required to be a physician. Learning information in the detail we do is one of the things that separates us from midlevel practitioners.