dumb question but...

[aye]

I know there's rankings for med schools that are Research vs Primary Care. What exactly does Primary Care mean?? They train better doctors than research doctors? What factors go into that?? Thanks

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[VFrank]

Don't pay attention to the primary care rankings. They are completely subjective and don't really tell you anything useful about the school. They are tallied based on what other deans think of other schools. Therefore, if the dean at school X has a buddy who is the dean at school Y, he will get a high mark. There are no numbers to really back up anything. Research rankings are based on funding, average MCATs and GPAs, big faculty names, etc. At least this is what the doctors I am shadowing this summer have told me (they are all MDs, FACPs, and one is a Northwestern professor).

 

[W222]

Well, VFRANK is both right and wrong. Primary care rankings do matter. Some schools have great research dollar rankings but their primary care ranking is in the toilet. Primary care is considered training in family med, OB/GYN, general practice, and internal med. That said, rankings in these areas show how well they train people to go into these fields. It is a basic measure of their clinical programs because research dollars dont tell you anything about how well a school trains clinically. The BEST way to tell if a schools is a good educator is the residency director score, this tells how well students from these schools fair in the residency match and such.

 

[Gleevec]

The BEST way to tell if a schools is a good educator is the residency director score, this tells how well students from these schools fair in the residency match and such.

Not really, there was a thread about this a while back, but the response rates on the residency director forms are extremely low, and some think that many of the major academic hospitals dont even respond to them.

So basically, you're relying on a residency director in the middle of Iowa to rank your northeast program, or whatever it might be.