How does your school waste your time?

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libertyyne said:
So if people have the option between traditional and non traditional curricula all other things being equal should they opt for the traditional?
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Absolutely! TBL/PBL/flipped classroom is one of biggest time sucks in existence. Be vary wary of any school that even hints at moving away from lecture based curriculum. You have enough work to do to learn the required material without wasting your times in small groups talking about random material.

Ideal school:
-Optional Lectures
-No TBL/PBL
-NBME exams

I'm not sure if any school actually has all 3, but that would be incredible
 
Dermpire said:
Absolutely! TBL/PBL/flipped classroom is one of biggest time sucks in existence. Be vary wary of any school that even hints at moving away from lecture based curriculum. You have enough work to do to learn the required material without wasting your times in small groups talking about random material.

Ideal school:
-Optional Lectures
-No TBL/PBL
-NBME exams

I'm not sure if any school actually has all 3, but that would be incredible
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You just described Wayne state .
 
Affiche said:
Lol not convinced. I have multiple friends there who consistently bitch about getting "Wayne Stated" right before exams.
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Maybe you are right. Although people getting Wayned is true. they have traditional curriculum, non mandatory attendance, and I think the nbme exams.
 
My school has mandatory one hour wellness lectures 1-2x a month. Which we also have assignments for. It's a nice concept in theory.
 
mcatjelly said:
My school has mandatory one hour wellness lectures 1-2x a month. Which we also have assignments for. It's a nice concept in theory.
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That doesn't sound too terrible.
 
mcatjelly said:
My school has mandatory one hour wellness lectures 1-2x a month. Which we also have assignments for. It's a nice concept in theory.
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Lol, these types of things just make me sad. How do they not understand that a mandatory session and assignment actually has the exact opposite effect of promoting wellness.

I don't think the faculty comprehend that we are busy enough and any extra "stuff" no matter how well intentioned is likely to make the situation worse. 🙁
 
Dermpire said:
Lol, these types of things just make me sad. How do they not understand that a mandatory session and assignment actually has the exact opposite effect of promoting wellness.

I don't think the faculty comprehend that we are busy enough and any extra "stuff" no matter how well intentioned is likely to make the situation worse. 🙁
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So much this! There are offers to come to them and ask for help with one thing or another... but very often that "help" translates into someone who is not really understanding your problem taking up your time to talk to you about common sense solutions that you could have and did think of for yourself (study hard, spend more time with the material, review and quiz yourself as you read, etc.) It is just that you don't have the time to do those things and still meet all your other obligations and meetings and mandatory events and laundry.... and meeting with someone to tell you what you already know.
 
Anything mandatory
 
Hmm let's see

1. Makes me use microscopes that couldn't see an ascarid to practice histopathology.

2. Doesn't give me materials to run a basic karyotyping.

3. Allows a sadist psycho to torture and fail students on a whim instead of merit (thank God I passed that psychopathic *****).

4. Allows professors to hold a lecture in which they basically dictate and do little to no explaining. (thanks uncle Xerox , we didn't knew you could talk)

5. Most teachers threaten to sue if you ask to video tape their lecture even for limited time use and display a high degree of hostility to anything but parchment , ink-well and goose quill.
 
FindMeOnTheLinks said:
-Make some of us drive 1-1.5 hrs each way to "get experience in clinic" aka shadow for 4 hrs 1 day per week, through january of 2nd year. Pretty great to use up 6-7 hours of prime afternoon study time for the bulk of 2nd year. I will say that some people had great experiences and their preceptor let them do a lot, but for many people like me, may have had a preceptor who didn't let them do much (i.e. private practice family medicine doc who was a super nice guy and tried to teach, but his clinic was so busy that allowing me to see patients and present to him would slow everything down too much)

-Make us write up bs "reflections" AND log all patients for the aforementioned shadowing, plus reflections on our clinical skills assessments

-Interprofessional education sessions where we basically just listen to the nursing, PT and pharm students talk because we are still preclinical and can't meaningfully contribute in any way to the scenario.

-Worthless lecturers who make **** powerpoints with very little usable information on the slides, and suck at explaining or have thick accents, forcing us to find an outside resource to learn the material.

-They love to have "engaged learning/clinical cases" lectures, but the problem is sometimes they will have these lectures before the actual material is taught. It happens over and over. "Haven't had a lecture on diabetes yet? Okay here's an engaged learning on diabetic pharmacology."

-Make us rotate at 5-6 different hospitals, each with a different EMR and each with their own extremely lengthy onboarding process. Proceed to not get the certification process rolling until step 1 dedicated time comes around. Meaning that basically once a week we will have to go to campus for a couple hours. GREAT way to f%$k up the daily study schedule.

-Repeatedly make us go through the motions of performing a basic physical exam and test us on it, even though we have already learned and been assessed on it very thoroughly (great example of how different course directors and faculty don't communicate)

-during the middle of the year, decide that our clinical skills sessions will now be downtown instead of on campus, forcing us to drive an extra half hour or more during rush hour, and on top of that not have enough parking anywhere

there's probably a lot more but i'm too lazy to think about it all. every school has BS that will waste your time and we really just need to get over it, but it feels good to vent
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my brother is a first year at this school. he showed me the downtown parking situation email and i felt so bad
 
OMM "competencies" where we literally memorize a script and just recite it to the proctor while actually not knowing wth we are doing.

Mandatory bioethics lectures

Mandatory program where we all load onto a bus and have to go to an elementary school and provide physical exams for the kids. This takes about 4-5 hours and was happening 2-3x a month for a while there.




Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
libertyyne said:
So if people have the option between traditional and non traditional curricula all other things being equal should they opt for the traditional?
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I would. There's a reason it became tradition...

I look at it this way-if you want to learn in a group, you still can. But no ones forcing you to waste your entire day (literally, some times) listening to arrogant people ramble off incorrect facts about some case they never bother to research beforehand
 
ConfusedChemist said:
I would. There's a reason it became tradition...

I look at it this way-if you want to learn in a group, you still can. But no ones forcing you to waste your entire day (literally, some times) listening to arrogant people ramble off incorrect facts about some case they never bother to research beforehand
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This sounds like my personal hell.
 
During the first two years: Mandatory lectures.

Half of the professors completely suck and I'm paying like $100,000 for an education I could easily get for under $1000 from Pathoma, First Aid and other sources. Really the only physical course you need is anatomy. I could have been learning at my own pace, setting my own hours, and maybe even work a second job or be involved in a business venture. Heck you could rush it and be ready for Step 1 in one year or you could extend it over three years and actually have a life.

During the third year: Standing around doing nothing when really you need to be studying.

I mean yeah, this is the real world. Exciting stuff isn't happening 24/7. But man I couldn't even count the days where I learned almost nothing and wore holes in my feet standing for twelve hours a day, only to get home, open a book and pass out before I could get anywhere. I got the same evals as my peers no matter how hard I worked. You only get great evals if the MD arbitrarily decides they your personality or you happened to know the answer to that one question they asked you because you read it yesterday. All that truly matters is your test scores but theres no time to study.

During fourth year: Scheduling elective rotations

It's a pain in the ass and a lot of the clinical co-ordinators are incompetent and generally unpleasant people who don't respond to your emails for days and then yell at you for coming in to see them. The timing of everything sucks, you basically have three months to take STEP 2 CS, STEP 2 CK and do an elective rotation to grab some specialty-specific LORs so your application can be ready in September. Then after that maybe you do one or two useful rotations but the rest of the time you go in and the MDs don't even care that you're there or not... its enough of a commitment that you can't really pursue anything else but yet you have pockets of free time where you are just twiddling your thumbs waiting for a computer algorithm to decide your future.

Sigh. I would change so many things about medical school if I could. But the reality? It's about the $ just like it always is. The system is set up to siphon time and money from students under the facade that its okay because we can pay it back later.

Don't even get me started about residency.
 
fullmetal said:
During the first two years: Mandatory lectures.

Half of the professors completely suck and I'm paying like $100,000 for an education I could easily get for under $1000 from Pathoma, First Aid and other sources. Really the only physical course you need is anatomy. I could have been learning at my own pace, setting my own hours, and maybe even work a second job or be involved in a business venture. Heck you could rush it and be ready for Step 1 in one year or you could extend it over three years and actually have a life.

During the third year: Standing around doing nothing when really you need to be studying.

I mean yeah, this is the real world. Exciting stuff isn't happening 24/7. But man I couldn't even count the days where I learned almost nothing and wore holes in my feet standing for twelve hours a day, only to get home, open a book and pass out before I could get anywhere. I got the same evals as my peers no matter how hard I worked. You only get great evals if the MD arbitrarily decides they your personality or you happened to know the answer to that one question they asked you because you read it yesterday. All that truly matters is your test scores but theres no time to study.

During fourth year: Scheduling elective rotations

It's a pain in the ass and a lot of the clinical co-ordinators are incompetent and generally unpleasant people who don't respond to your emails for days and then yell at you for coming in to see them. The timing of everything sucks, you basically have three months to take STEP 2 CS, STEP 2 CK and do an elective rotation to grab some specialty-specific LORs so your application can be ready in September. Then after that maybe you do one or two useful rotations but the rest of the time you go in and the MDs don't even care that you're there or not... its enough of a commitment that you can't really pursue anything else but yet you have pockets of free time where you are just twiddling your thumbs waiting for a computer algorithm to decide your future.

Sigh. I would change so many things about medical school if I could. But the reality? It's about the $ just like it always is. The system is set up to siphon time and money from students under the facade that its okay because we can pay it back later.

Don't even get me started about residency.
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Man, don't hold back tell us how you really feel.
 
Mace1370 said:
Let's see, we had a few things (mostly in first year of medical school) that were a complete waste of time.

- History of Military Medicine: mandatory lectures every so often. The lecturer literally read a script for an hour. He had a voice like something out of a History channel documentary, which was pretty funny. A couple of times during the class we had an "exam" where we had to come in and write an essay just like you were in a college lit class or something. My essays were the most incomprehensible pieces of garbage, but I still managed to pass.

- We had a seminar and small group discussion class that focused on our feelings/biases and our patients feelings. This class also required essays.

- Summer field exercises that basically boiled down to camping in the woods without showers. The first time, ok fine. The third time? Hard pass.
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It was your call to go to USUHS.
 
ITT MS1 and MS2 complain about everything that keeps them from memorizing FA.

Med school is more than studying for Step 1 and being a good doctor requires more than basic science knowledge.
 
seminoma said:
ITT MS1 and MS2 complain about everything that keeps them from memorizing FA.

Med school is more than studying for Step 1 and being a good doctor requires more than basic science knowledge.
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Medical education isn't going to improve with that kind of mentality. There's a general consensus that medical students feel socially and emotionally below par because of poor scheduling, excess of frivolous assignments, and rules that foster competition> collaboration among peers (curves, rankings, peer evals, and little time for socializing/generating some camaraderie among classmates). I agree with you that there's more to med school than memorizing first aid, but I dislike the idea that none of these other complaints hold any merit when the mental health and wellness of medical students is consistently and perpetually suffering. When a quarter of medical students are showing symptoms of depression, I think we need to start listening to what they're saying and delve more into why they're saying it.
 
Affiche said:
Medical education isn't going to improve with that kind of mentality. There's a general consensus that medical students feel socially and emotionally below par because of poor scheduling, excess of frivolous assignments, and rules that foster competition> collaboration among peers (curves, rankings, peer evals, and little time for socializing/generating some camaraderie among classmates). I agree with you that there's more to med school than memorizing first aid, but I dislike the idea that none of these other complaints hold any merit when the mental health and wellness of medical students is consistently and perpetually suffering. When a quarter of medical students are showing symptoms of depression, I think we need to start listening to what they're saying and delve more into why they're saying it.
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Care to cite the source for your statistics?
 
Light at end of tunnel said:
Care to cite the source for your statistics?
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Sure thing, though I really don't wish to derail this thread with a debate about the prevalence of depression in medical school. My point was that a lot of these complaints have merit, and to dismiss them is to perpetuate an unhealthy phenomenon.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2589340

"Conclusions and Relevance: In this systematic review, the summary estimate of the prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms among medical students was 27.2% and that of suicidal ideation was 11.1%. Further research is needed to identify strategies for preventing and treating these disorders in this population."
 
Wow. Mental health continues to be a huge contributor to ms/resident dissatisfaction. Ironically, institutions will move swiftly to paint any given individual as an aberration 'weak link' to be cast aside rather than acknowledge the existence of this 'underground' and stigmatized issue that affects roughly 1/3 of all involved.
 
Affiche said:
Medical education isn't going to improve with that kind of mentality. There's a general consensus that medical students feel socially and emotionally below par because of poor scheduling, excess of frivolous assignments, and rules that foster competition> collaboration among peers (curves, rankings, peer evals, and little time for socializing/generating some camaraderie among classmates). I agree with you that there's more to med school than memorizing first aid, but I dislike the idea that none of these other complaints hold any merit when the mental health and wellness of medical students is consistently and perpetually suffering. When a quarter of medical students are showing symptoms of depression, I think we need to start listening to what they're saying and delve more into why they're saying it.
Click to expand...

Mental health and wellness are suffering in med school because the majority of med students are whiny, self absorbed asshats that have always gotten their way and can't handle things actually being difficult for once.

Affiche said:
Sure thing, though I really don't wish to derail this thread with a debate about the prevalence of depression in medical school. My point was that a lot of these complaints have merit, and to dismiss them is to perpetuate an unhealthy phenomenon.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2589340

"Conclusions and Relevance: In this systematic review, the summary estimate of the prevalence of depression or depressive symptoms among medical students was 27.2% and that of suicidal ideation was 11.1%. Further research is needed to identify strategies for preventing and treating these disorders in this population."
Click to expand...

Not saying mental health/depression isn't an issue in the US, but this study cites it collected data from 43 countries. Not sure how accurate that 27.2% number is to the US.
 
seminoma said:
Mental health and wellness are suffering in med school because the majority of med students are whiny, self absorbed asshats that have always gotten their way and can't handle things actually being difficult for once.



Not saying mental health/depression isn't an issue in the US, but this study cites it collected data from 43 countries. Not sure how accurate that 27.2% number is to the US.
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Yeah, medical students totally develop depression and suicidal ideation because they're just ''whiny''. Get real.
 
seminoma said:
Mental health and wellness are suffering in med school because the majority of med students are whiny, self absorbed asshats that have always gotten their way and can't handle things actually being difficult for once.



Not saying mental health/depression isn't an issue in the US, but this study cites it collected data from 43 countries. Not sure how accurate that 27.2% number is to the US.
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What is an asshat?
 
Light at end of tunnel said:
What is an asshat?
Click to expand...
k5z4q8xqcbwq5zk023v0.png

Or
asshat_logo.jpg
 
libertyyne said:
Maybe you are right. Although people getting Wayned is true. they have traditional curriculum, non mandatory attendance, and I think the nbme exams.
Click to expand...

NBME exams at Wayne State make up an inconsequential part of ones grade at Wayne. Attendance at lecture is non-mandatory but there are plenty of other mandatory events you have to attend. Also, Wayne definitely has its own IPE curriculum that has recently been instituted and on top of that PBL or whatever those small groups are are definitely present at Wayne. Also, Wayne has mandatory dissections that lasts 3 months. In effect I would not recommend Wayne to anyone who doesn't like time waste.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
Backtothebasics8 said:
NBME exams at Wayne State make up an inconsequential part of ones grade at Wayne. Attendance at lecture is non-mandatory but there are plenty of other mandatory events you have to attend. Also, Wayne definitely has its own IPE curriculum that has recently been instituted and on top of that PBL or whatever those small groups are are definitely present at Wayne. Also, Wayne has mandatory dissections that lasts 3 months. In effect I would not recommend Wayne to anyone who doesn't like time waste.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
Click to expand...
Thank you for that insight. Do you think it is better or worse than schools that have upwards of 27hours per week of mandatory things in PBL tbl and early clinical exposure.
 
libertyyne said:
Thank you for that insight. Do you think it is better or worse than schools that have upwards of 27hours per week of mandatory things in PBL tbl and early clinical exposure.
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Holy ****! I couldn't even fathom how much I would hate my life at any school with 20+ hours of this stuff. How do these students have time to even breathe?
 
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SynapticDoctah said:
OMM "competencies" where we literally memorize a script and just recite it to the proctor while actually not knowing wth we are doing.

Mandatory bioethics lectures

Mandatory program where we all load onto a bus and have to go to an elementary school and provide physical exams for the kids. This takes about 4-5 hours and was happening 2-3x a month for a while there.




Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
Click to expand...

Our competencies suck b@lls. We are timed and the proctors will push us to the side to check if the diagnosis is correct and how we treated the person (don't have to 100% heal them LOL but we have to state whether it got better or not). I have no clue why people talk like OMM is chill in all schools. I'd trade places with them in a heart beat.

Then we got our random TBL thrown in every 2 weeks. Then our 4 hour shadowing every month, with 1 page essay. Then we also have quizzes thrown in depending on the TBL. Then we have this useless public health class every week.

I have to keep telling myself that there are far worse medical schools than mine as my coping mechanism.
 
Dermpire said:
Lol, these types of things just make me sad. How do they not understand that a mandatory session and assignment actually has the exact opposite effect of promoting wellness.

I don't think the faculty comprehend that we are busy enough and any extra "stuff" no matter how well intentioned is likely to make the situation worse. 🙁
Click to expand...
Beezlebub said:
wtf
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They exist. I dont know how the students do it, it would mean no time for anything else except study and classroom/mandatory time.
 
libertyyne said:
They exist. I dont know how the students do it, it would mean no time for anything else except study and classroom/mandatory time.
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i'd be anking's bros deck 27/27 of those hrs unless they supervise me then i'd give them the finger.
 
Beezlebub said:
i'd be anking's bros deck 27/27 of those hrs unless they supervise me then i'd give them the finger.
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Yeah , 8 hours a week of clinical activities, and the rest is either class or team based learning activities with mandatory participation. 10 or so hours are probably guided reading/studying time, but still it is excessive.
 
We avg 25 hours of "mandatory" stuff each week, it isn't all that bad since they don't really take attendance each session.
 
Mr Roboto said:
We practiced palpating coins through several sheets of paper. They wanted us to identify whether it was face up or down. Yeah.
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I've heard of a national OMM conferences with a Dr doing this on stage to show how adept they were at palpation...right before they started the Cranial portion of the presentation :laugh:.
 
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