Difference between Pimary Care and Research Schools!?

[ctaborda]

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Well I wanna know what the main differnece is?

I mean does it go by specialization?

I would like to be in the Surgery field, probably plastic surgery

, so I would like to know what type of schools I should enter.

Thanks!

Carlos

 

[ctaborda]

anyone ?

 

[superunknown]

US News has a guide to their picks for the top med schools. they are actually to ranks. One orders the schools by best research, the other by best primary care.

There's an online version available (just type some keywords into a search engine to get to it) with the top 50 of each, but you have to pay for the whole thing.

 

[SaltySqueegee]

$$$$$ $$$$$ and a little more $$$$$.

 

[ctaborda]

Yea yea, in fact I already payed there 😛 but I dont know if I should be aiming at a primary care or a research school!

I dont know the diff!

Thanks

Carlos.

 

[elephunt]

The schools that are highly ranked on the research side get a lot of grant funding from NSF, NIH, etc. They have academic medicine faculty that do cutting-edge research (as the name of the ranking implies.) As you'll notice from the actual list of schools on this ranking, most of the "big name" schools are "big name" because of research funding. (One of the major factors US News usues to make this ranking is the grant money coming into the school: 30% of the ranking comes from this figure.) So, when you say, "I want to go to Mayo" (for example), people have heard of the school and are impressed because it is highly ranked, and it is highly ranked because it gets a lot of funding and does a lot of research, which of course means there are a lot of really smart folks there. Make sense?

On the flip side, the Primary Care ranking is concerned with medical schools' focus on providing care to patients. If you read the "Methodology" section in US News about the rankings, it says that 30% of the Primary Care ranking is based on the number of grads from that school going into primary care specialties (family practice, pediatrics, and internal medicine.) In both rankings, there is a nebulous "quality assessment" score that accounts for 40% of the ranking and is the same for both research and primary care rankings.

I guess the point is, if you're interested in primary care (which, if you want to be a plastic surgeon, you probably aren't) then focus more on that ranking; if you want everyone to be impressed when you tell them where you went to med school, then focus on the research ranking. 😉 Of course, there are many schools that are ranked on both, so if you want a mix of both, then look at those. Hope this helps!

 

[WatchingWaiting]

The primary care ranking basically has no meaning whatosoever, whereas the research ranking provides a decent indication of how long people will pause for and whether or not they will say, "Wow" after you mention you are a medical student at "..."

The primary care thing is crap because (1) every med school prepares you well for primary care as the first three years of med school and the internship year are basically 80% exercises in primary care and Step III of the USMLE is basically a test of your ability to provide basic primary care, (2) primary care, whether family practice, peds, or psychiatry, is non-competitive for match persons (ie: unlike with rads, derm, ENT, ortho, neuro, and the like, if you want to get a family practice residency and have an MD, you will), (3) every med school matches at least 20% or so of its students in primary care, so it's not like going to Harvard will limit your exposure to primary care procedures. Even if the main hospital at a prestige program is a tertiary care center, pretty much every school also has a county hospital, a VA, or the like also affiliated, where you can spend the bulk of your rotations if you are not interested in a specialist role or exotic cases.

 

[lowbudget]

Just to add, the Primary Care thing is misleading because there's a large % of people going into Int Medicine and a small but significant % going into Pediatrics who choose to subspecialize after residency. USNews doesn't measure fellowship into their numbers. They only look at Match, they don't look at actual practice. The other thing it doesn't consider re: Primary Care are the specialists who provide primary care (OB/Gyn, EM).

Anyways, there are threads and a lot of journal articles out there critiquing the US News methodology. One thing to remember is reality creates perception creates reality if someone's paying attention.... meaning, some schools on that list are really good. Other's probably aren't that different from the average school. And lots of other schools that aren't ranked are actually really good. The problem is when people read the listing year to year, the people who rank them typically refer to the rankings when the make next year's rank and so certain schools remain in the ranks just by virtue of being ranked the year before. "Hmmm, it's time to fill out this survey, let's see... is XYZ a good school? I don't know, let me look at US News, OH it must be, I'll rank it high"... stuff like that. So just take the rankings with a grain of salt.

 

[smokeycat]

Well I wanna know what the main differnece is?

I mean does it go by specialization?

I would like to be in the Surgery field, probably plastic surgery

, so I would like to know what type of schools I should enter.

Thanks!

Carlos

Check out these links
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/med/brief/mdrrank_brief.php
http://www.medicalschooladmission.com/top_medical_schools.html
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/05/03/prcb0503.htm

The first one has rankings based on primary care and research.

 

[ctaborda]

so surgery lies in primary care or research schools!? 😛

 

[ctaborda]

???

 

[SanDiegoSOD]

You have asked a question that many of us have wondered from time to time. Unfortunately, there is no good answer. It seems to me, however, that the schools that are famous for their top-notch surgery centers are also highly ranked in research, not primary care (e.g. Johns Hopkins, world reknowned for its quality surgical programs, is research ranked #3 and primary care ranked #46 by US News). Take the rankings with a grain of salt, but if your looking for top surgery programs, generally look at the top research schools. Better yet, talk to your pre-med advisor about the subject.

 

[ctaborda]

SanDiego, you're right..

thanx

 

[elias514]

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor! UMich rocks for surgery.

 

[gujuDoc]

well if you are going to be a surgeon, I would go to a school that has a more of a focus on subspecialties and not primary care.

If those two are the only categories, then I would say the research schools......because often times the research schools also have huge tertiary care centers which generally will have better surg programs than say a program that's focus is to produce rural physicians and so forth.

Maybe someone in the surg forum may be able to answer some of these questions.

 

[meanderson]

it really doesn't matter. Most 'primary care' schools usually have at least half of at least class choose something other than fp, im, peds, or obgyn, and as someone mentioned earlier, going to a 'research' school wouldn't hinder your ability to enter these fields because you will still get exposure.