Emergency Medicine

[DecaturH]

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Hello, first time poster here...sorry if its not too professional.
I am a high school junior in the state of Washington, and I have a few questions:
For the past 4 hours i have been researching college procedures for Premed, Medschool, and residencies, and i still have a few questions
-I am planning on applying to many colleges for premed program, and I would like to know what are some recommended schools? I did some forum searching and found UW, University of Washington, is an alright school for researching in Medicial feild, but what about for Emergency Medicine i.e. ER Doctor or Surgeon.
-Also I am still a little unsure on how the process of getting into Med-School is, but bear with me; 4 years of undergrad, MCAT, acceptance into Med school i.e. UW Med. is that correct?
-Thanks,

 

[BigRedBeta]

1) Focus on finding, and then attending the college that's the best fit for you. UDub is a perfectly acceptable choice, and one that if it's the right "fit" for you, would be orders of magnitude better than Harvard, or Yale or Gonzaga or WORLD'S GREATEST PRE-MED SCHOOL SUPER HAPPY FUN TIME that you can think of. Of course if one of those schools is the right school for you - academically, socially, physically and emotionally - then you should go to them. The reality is, where you go to college doesn't matter that much (despite what people on this board will tell you) - what you do there is what's most important.

2) Medical school is not where you specialize, it's just about learning the foundations of medicine, and then determining what specialty is right for you. As a HS student, you're almost a decade away from having to make that decision. Residency is where you specialize, and the process of deciding where to do that training is pretty much impossible for a HS student to understand (simply because at that point you'll be at a position in life that is so foreign to you right now, what's important to you now, likely won't be on your radar at that point).

3) 4 years of undergrad, take the appropriate pre-med classes, do well, take the MCAT, finish application in summer of junior year, interview in the fall/winter, wait to get accepted.

 

[QuizzicalApe]

The college you pick isn't really going to be a major factor in your med school process as long as you pick a place where you can be happy and successful.

 

[Rendar5]

What everyone above said about colleges.

In terms of emergency medicine, from what I know (and it's not that much of the northwest), Washington is the one state where it's not a strongly established field (in terms of residency programs and when they started). So if you're interested in shadowing in college, you might not have a solid experience. I believe most of the docs in the emergency rooms there are not emergency medicine trained. Trauma surgery is a different animal and what I said doesn't apply. Regardless, don't set your eyes squarely on a specific field of medicine this early.

 

[EMS5]

Go creatively entertain yourself. You're thinking too much.

 

[huskerdye]

Welcome to SDN,

First off, your right on the fact that you'll go to four years of undergraduate, take the MCAT, do extracurriculars, apply for med school, and hopefully get in.

From there, you have four more years of schooling in which you'll get your medical degree and also take the first steps towards passing your boards.

Even after medical school your not finished you then go to a residency program. Which can vary anywhere from 3-7+ years. Depending on what you want to specialize in. For instance, general surgery is a 5 year residency, family med is a 3 year residency.

As for undergrad schools, you could go anywhere and still get into medical school. Just do well, get a high gpa, maybe throw in a few extracurriculars or research, and rock the MCAT. There's also the option of finding BS/MD programs, like the one I am in.

As for medical schools, I wouldn't worry about it yet. Worry about that after undergrad 🙂 if you're just interested you can google the top medical schools.

 

[EMS5]

re: top medical schools

this is a misnomer. medical schools are often ranked by NIH funding or other criteria that do not do a satisfactory job of evaluating factors that affect the medical students....

while some schools are very research heavy and others focus on primary care, the biggest and most important thing is that you find the right school for you. as is true with college, don't worry about going to a top school, instead worry about what you do at the school you go to

 

[DecaturH]

Thank you everyone for thier help, im 16 and wanna start gettin my stuff together and I think that this website is perfect, because the fact that i can get help from people like you guys...
Learned that i should just focus on getting to an undergrad school and focus on that first, then all the rest, instead of trying to plan all this when im only a Junior in High school

-Again Thank you guys