@floatingribs It's human nature to make presumptive valuations on others based on a limited knowledge that is excluded to n=1. That being said, people are reacting strongly to your thread because your title reads like a Gawker title piece. The content you provided doesn't have much pertinence to the turf war concerns that engender issues regarding scope of practice. In addition you make some bold statements regarding issues that aren't set in stone e.g. "...because you wanting to become a doctor doesn't mean you're smarter in something you've never been taught yet." I taught myself how to read telemetry strips, increase my competency in venipuncture, and learned how to write the basic skeleton of an HPI on my own initiative as a pre-medical student. I would argue that the difference between a medical student and any other student is their level of self-engagement in their own education and the fact that they are a catalyst to meeting the demands of medical school.
Finally, you mention how you learn how to calculate doses which have more clinical relevance than certain classes pre-meds take such as multivariable calculus or linear algebra. However, you are delusional if you believe that students who are able to excel in such courses would struggle with the basic multiplication and division involved in dose calculations. Reading your antagonistic post that discredits pre-medical students because a proportion of them won't be accepted into medical school is not only a poor use of appeal to authority, it's a use of false authority. Medical school acceptance bears no weight regarding the current competence of any student to perform in a clinical environment. In fact, certain medical schools favor students from non-medical backgrounds who develop a passion in medicine because they can provide a unique perspective to the profession that could bring extremely beneficial paradigm changes to the way we currently think about medicine.
The reason other people are being dismissive of your post is because your post is flawed in the same vein that you criticize your critics. Prior comments about pre-meds being undifferentiated should be taken to heart. Many views that you have are premature and many opinions that you have in response to polarizing opinions can also be intrinsically flawed. Medicine isn't a perfect science that can be taught exclusively through a textbook or within a classroom setting. To argue that a BSN holistically covers more clinical relevance than the amount of information gained by a premed is the type of thinking that would be coveted by someone overvaluing an investment of only a BSN as their sole educational experience. Instead of evaluating other fields based on your
specialty, the more productive mindset would be to learn more about the opportunities provided by other fields. Medical schools openly embrace diversity in order to enrich the field and to possibly find unique answers to systemic problems. The posts you have made indicate that your thinking is too narrow for someone who is still taking baby steps not just as a medical professional, but into life in general.
