MD & DO How many of your preclinical courses have been taught by PhDs?

[Tozanzibarbymotorcar]

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Not MD/PhDs or MD/DOs. Pure PhDs. Do you think this has had an impact on your prep for step? Almost all our pre-c courses are taught by PhDs who have no experience in the clinic. I'm wondering if my experience would have been different had I been taught mostly by those with clinical experience.

 

[Raney Schauer]

I'm wondering if my experience would have been different had I been taught mostly by those with clinical experience.

Doubtful. The material is the material, and the questions are the questions. Don't try to blame your step score on your profs.

 

[mrbreakfast]

Would personally prefer my pre-clinical courses be taught by people who know the material really well (PhDs) rather than by clinicians who barely remember it.

 

[Tozanzibarbymotorcar]

Doubtful. The material is the material, and the questions are the questions. Don't try to blame your step score on your profs.

Nobody is blaming anyone. I don't even have a step score so calm down. I do think that clinical faculty can add a different dimension to learning in medical school.

 

[ciestar]

MS1: they were mostly phd’s
MS2: almost all clinicians with the exception of microbiology who was a phd

 

[Raney Schauer]

Nobody is blaming anyone. I don't even have a step score so calm down. I do think that clinical faculty can add a different dimension to learning in medical school.

I'm perfectly calm. Read your initial post again. You start out by talking about PhD's and prep for step 1. Then you talk about how your experience would have been different had you had clinicians teaching instead, more than subtly implying that you had a disappointing step 1 experience, and were attributing it to the professional background of your faculty.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I'm perfectly calm. Read your initial post again. You start out by talking about PhD's and prep for step 1. Then you talk about how your experience would have been different had you had clinicians teaching instead, more than subtly implying that you had a disappointing step 1 experience, and were attributing it to the professional background of your faculty.

Actually he asked if anyone thought there would be a difference, and then he said he wonders if his experience would have been different. You inferred a lot, and your response was needlessly aggressive. Let’s not derail the thread over an argument about who is or isn’t calm or whatever. You answered his question.

 

[ortnakas]

I had pre-clinical instructors who were MDs, DOs, PhDs and one PharmD, and what degree they had really wasn’t the distinguishing factor on if they were a good instructor or not.

 

[Espressso]

I think OP is referring to the idea that more often than not PhD's tend to teach into too many details, while clinicians tend to hit the high yield board stuff that will get us points on the exams. Which I generally agree with. For example, our neuro courses were pretty intense, and rarely do any of the details our neurophys professor tested us on comes up in UW. But nonetheless, I think this is what separates MD/DOs from other health care professionals... the level of detail in the basic sciences.

 

[Espressso]

Like if your classes were all taught by Dr. Sattar, Dr. Ryan, and the Physeo guy, and the sketchy dudes/dudettes. Totally different ballgame. But they're teaching strictly for board-prep purposes, while faculty at med schools are not just teaching for boards, but for general knowledge and to test our understanding. And I think this kind of ties into the Step 1 p/f discussion. Because it's clear that med schools have a curriculum to teach and we have to complete, but boards have become the end-all-be-all, and there often is a discrepancy in those two goals.

 

[mrbreakfast]

But they're teaching strictly for board-prep purposes, while faculty at med schools are not just teaching for boards, but for general knowledge and to test our understanding.

Precisely. You don't need to just know the answer, you need to know WHY it's the answer.

Pre-clinicals have another point, which is to excite the med student's mind and help them develop a curiosity that may translate to clinicals. Some students may be drawn in by anatomy, or neuroscience, or immunology, or ID, or physiology, or whatever. Your exposure to different fields of medical science is potentially much broader in pre-clinicals than in clinicals.

 

[Raney Schauer]

Actually he asked if anyone thought there would be a difference, and then he said he wonders if his experience would have been different. You inferred a lot, and your response was needlessly aggressive. Let’s not derail the thread over an argument about who is or isn’t calm or whatever. You answered his question.

How on earth is it aggressive? Is everyone mainlining butthurt today?

 

[Tozanzibarbymotorcar]

How on earth is it aggressive? Is everyone mainlining butthurt today?

Let's stay on the topic please. Thank you.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

How on earth is it aggressive? Is everyone mainlining butthurt today?

Please stay on topic and keep it professional.

 

[CherryRedDracul]

I don't remember, but the more hardcore science stuff was taught by PhDs. The more clinical the material was, the more likely it was taught by a physician.

Ultimately, I won't lay any blame on the PhDs. A few bits of minutiae they taught did end up on my boards but were not covered in Step 1. With that said, it's up to you to figure out what's worth memorizing and what isn't.

 

[sharkbyte]

Basic sciences M1 year were taught by PhDs mostly with some MDs giving lectures here and there. Organ systems M2 year were pretty much all MDs.

 

[aldol16]

Had a mix of both. Probably more MD or MD/PhDs than just pure PhDs. But when you're being taught basic sciences, honestly you get a better education with the PhDs. As long as they include some information about clinical relevance. For the basic sciences, it's more important to understand the why than just the what. But I can see how having PhDs teach organ blocks would be detrimental. A PhD can't provide the same level of clinical insight and application that an MD can. It's important to develop that insight - perhaps not for Step 1 but for what comes immediately after Step 1.

 

[Cheeni17]

Doubtful. The material is the material, and the questions are the questions. Don't try to blame your step score on your profs.

You make it sound like they all teach the same material. Good instructors can make or break boards at a school. The material is the material is not really true. There were noticeable gaps in what some teachers taught st my school vs what was on boards/actually clinically useful. The more on the useful line they teach first pass the easier boards and clinicals become. Overall our PhD faculty were better than our clinicians. Our clinicians were mostly awful instructors.

 

[Philosopher Jagger]

You make it sound like they all teach the same material. Good instructors can make or break boards at a school. The material is the material is not really true. There were noticeable gaps in what some teachers taught st my school vs what was on boards/actually clinically useful. The more on the useful line they teach first pass the easier boards and clinicals become. Overall our PhD faculty were better than our clinicians. Our clinicians were mostly awful instructors.

^This.

There are test questions floating around at my school that are from long-deceased professors. We're talking 15+ years. And the questions are ludicrously detailed on minutae. There's nothing saying the Pre-C curriculum at all schools are equivolent, and I'd argue they for sure aren't.

Some schools will be diligent and really target Step 1 prep to cover their @$$ on pass rates, others may adhere to other components based on tradition, tenure, etc. That being said, UFAP is the same resource no matter which school you go to.

And until anyone can argue they left UFAP alone and studied Step 1 from pre-c lectures, I don't think this argument really means much

 

[evilbooyaa]

Most of the ones during MS1, especially biochem.

 

[Raney Schauer]

And the questions are ludicrously detailed on minutae.

The purpose of which is to teach you how to rapidly parse the useful information from the chaff.

 

[getdown]

How much of that stuff do you remember anyway after the exam? Which begs the question, does it even matter who teaches it since you'll have to relearn in via Uworld anyway.

 

[Deecee2DO]

OP, M1 knowledge isn't that clinically relevant to practicing medicine anyways. Its the foundations you need to understand the clinically relevant material you learn later which is then, as you know, taught by physicians. I don't need an MD/DO to teach me the foundational concepts that they themselves brain dumped years ago once they got into clinical training and then into practice . Bottom line, you don't need M1 stuff to practice medicine you need M1 stuff to learn how to learn how to practice medicine

 

[aldol16]

Some schools will be diligent and really target Step 1 prep to cover their @$$ on pass rates, others may adhere to other components based on tradition, tenure, etc. That being said, UFAP is the same resource no matter which school you go to.

And until anyone can argue they left UFAP alone and studied Step 1 from pre-c lectures, I don't think this argument really means much

I think there are two different things being brought up here that are worth teasing apart. Pre-clinical lectures are good for building up your foundation and conceptual understanding, i.e. why exactly does the Frank-Starling curve look the way it does. UFAP is good as a boards review resource to review the material during your pre-dedicated/dedicated period, i.e. Oh, that's what a Starling curve looks like again. I think this is the source of a lot of undue stress during dedicated - if you don't have a strong foundation to begin with (which for most students will come from lectures), it's going to be hard to memorize that vast volume of material. There isn't enough time in the world to review every single concept in sufficient detail to perform amazing on Step 1. However, if you have a solid foundation, then UFAP becomes review and application - you already have the knowledge; now you just need to get it fresh in your mind again and use it.

So I think that pre-clinical courses are important in the sense that you should be learning from them and getting that solid foundation. The exception, of course, is if you have a bunch of PhD professors just talking about their resource. This is probably the minority of curricula but if it does occur, then it would behoove you to find a better resource for primary learning and stick to that. But I would say that it's incredibly difficult to learn from First Aid or Pathoma. Those are review resources. And there are times that I still go back to my notes from lectures because I remembered a really useful diagram or figure so I refer to it.

 

[Goro]

At my school, fortunate to have a PhD faculty that confer with the MDs and Dos on what's really relevant an OMSI and II. So, for example, having seen them in action, our microbiologist will talk about the bugs, how you test for them (the bug people LOVE lab tests, for some reason) and how they cause disease in the CNS, but leave for the clinicians the meat of the medical aspect of, say, brain infections. The pathologist will then cover "this is what your brain looks like on bugs", and the pathological processes that go with it. the pharmacologist will talk about antibiotics in how they work and which one get into the CNS, but the clinicians stick with what is empiric vs specific treatment and what do you do if, say someone is allergic to drug Z.

 

[Raney Schauer]

How much of that stuff do you remember anyway after the exam? Which begs the question, does it even matter who teaches it since you'll have to relearn in via Uworld anyway.

Exactly. It could be a muppet on podium for all the difference it makes as long as the salient points get made and the material presented is useful enough for you to go off on your own and use the information to answer questions, which is the ultimate goal of medical school:

1. Answer enough questions correctly in order to,
2. score enough points to create as many options for yourself as possible,
3. which allows you to choose the speciality you want,
4. which allows you to live the life you want,
5. doing the work you want to do,
6. where you want to do it.

One might note how the welfare of a patient or a population of patients doesn't really seem to factor heavily in the process (because that's all this is - processing a person through an educational system), but hopefully it's in the background of all the motivation behind the decision to do all this to begin with, because there are far easier ways to do 4-6.

 

[libertyyne]

IMO quality of instruction is not related to PHD vs MD credentials of the person teaching it. Some of my worst classes were headed by MDs and some of my best taught classes were taught by PHDs. It is the quality of the instructor that matters at the end of the day. Some PHDs are board focused and some MDs are step 2 focused. Medical school instruction in general tends to be poor because of time constraints and large amount of material that needs to be covered. If you had najeeb or ryan teach you everything that needs to be taught it would take 4 years instead of two to cover the same amount of material.

 

[Raney Schauer]

PhD, MD, DO, DC, OD, Aud.D, PharmD, if you're not good at teaching concepts in a way that the target audience can receive and use, it doesn't matter what parts of the alphabet you capitalize and put at the end of your name.

I'm happy if a PhD is teaching me basic science.

I'm happy if an MD/DO is teaching me clinical medicine.

I'm happy if a PharmD is talking pharmacology.

BUT If the degree on person teaching X, Y and Z doesn't match 100% with the subject, but they teach that subject well, I'm STILL GOOD. They did their job, so I can do mine (again, answering all the questions).

 

[7331poas]

The purpose of which is to teach you how to rapidly parse the useful information from the chaff.

Lmao wonderful.

"Hey let's throw in a random amount of BS to test their chart reading skills"