Medical Schools?

[Sinister]

Do you guys feel that the medical schools you are attending are preparing you well for the boards? I go to TCMC in Scranton PA, and sometimes I feel as if they teach us everything except for what is board relevant like things that would be good for a primary care physician. Our school does have a mission to increase more primary care doctors in the region so I guess having students barely pass the boards is the best way to insure that. Just wanted to know how things are at in other medical schools.

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[akhan283]

Did my school prepare me? Hell to the NO. I am attending a school in the UK with a PBL style curriculum. Can't get any worse than that when it comes to boards prep.
Now I'm studying at night with school in the day (clinical years so I come home tired), hoping that I can pull of some kind of miracle.
I think I will be okay for step II because thats the kind of teaching we get here.. more clinically oriented. My basic sciences is shocking.

 

[Rollo]

PCOM's OMM department over-prepares us for the OMM portion on COMLEX. The department exams are wild yet at the same time, the basic OMM concepts are hammered into us because of their tough exams.

Other than that, they do a mediocre job at preparing for boards. The dean has told us that their purpose isn't to prepare us for the boards, but to prepare us for the clinical years. And they do a great job at that, no doubt. But sometimes clinicians emphasize too much of the "clinical" aspect which forces us to spend less time learning the basic science concepts.

At the end of the day, if you took the time to understand the basics the first time around, studying for boards won't be too bad because most of it you will have seen before.

 

[jopo]

Do you guys feel that the medical schools you are attending are preparing you well for the boards? I go to TCMC in Scranton PA, and sometimes I feel as if they teach us everything except for what is board relevant like things that would be good for a primary care physician. Our school does have a mission to increase more primary care doctors in the region so I guess having students barely pass the boards is the best way to insure that. Just wanted to know how things are at in other medical schools.

I feel exactly the same; except, I go to a school in the midwest. During my first year there was even a rumor going around that they don't teach to STEP 1 to increase the number of primary care doctors they produce; which they brag about all the time, but I doubt it is true. My school does however teach to STEP 2. We are below the national average on STEP 1, but way above it on STEP 2 .

 

[AlexMorph]

Do you guys feel that the medical schools you are attending are preparing you well for the boards? I go to TCMC in Scranton PA, and sometimes I feel as if they teach us everything except for what is board relevant like things that would be good for a primary care physician. Our school does have a mission to increase more primary care doctors in the region so I guess having students barely pass the boards is the best way to insure that. Just wanted to know how things are at in other medical schools.

lol, you certainly are not the only one to think that, OP. im with you on that one. i think my school does the same thing...

 

[unsung]

I feel exactly the same; except, I go to a school in the midwest. During my first year there was even a rumor going around that they don't teach to STEP 1 to increase the number of primary care doctors they produce; which they brag about all the time, but I doubt it is true. My school does however teach to STEP 2. We are below the national average on STEP 1, but way above it on STEP 2 .

Exactly!

I wonder if all those schools that claim to teach to "prepare us for the wards" are really just teaching Step 2 material!

It is the most effed up thing, ever. Like, why would I want to focus on what treatments to give, when I can't even DIAGNOSIS the patient with the damn disease.

Or understand the pathophys of the disease process in the first place.

 

[myhandsarecold]

Now I'm studying at night with school in the day (clinical years so I come home tired)

newsflash...you are now just like 90+% of people in medical school

 

[Sinister]

Did my school prepare me? Hell to the NO. I am attending a school in the UK with a PBL style curriculum. Can't get any worse than that when it comes to boards prep.
Now I'm studying at night with school in the day (clinical years so I come home tired), hoping that I can pull of some kind of miracle.
I think I will be okay for step II because thats the kind of teaching we get here.. more clinically oriented. My basic sciences is shocking.

We also have the PBL format and I feel its not really useful at all especially for board studying. I dont know how they do it for you guys but for us they give us a short case with all the buzz words. There is 10 of us in each group and its kinda awkward since its so obvious what answer they are looking for. I get that they are trying to get us to work as a team which is something we obviously need when working in a hospital but it just feels very artificial to the point of making a mockery out of team work.

Like right now we are doing cardiopulmonary, our test is tomorrow. We had 4 lectures on EKGs given by cardiologists explaining how they they work exactly and EKG signs that only a cardiologist would know. A few days before the test they give us a list of the pathologies we need to know on EKG and they are pretty much all the ones in First Aid with 2 or 3 extra. So why have four 2 hour lectures on EKGs. The cardiologists even told us we wouldnt totally understand them. Feels like a waste of time when we could be studying for something we could remember for the long term. Im glad to hear that my school isnt the only one like this though...

 

[akhan283]

We also have the PBL format and I feel its not really useful at all especially for board studying. I dont know how they do it for you guys but for us they give us a short case with all the buzz words. There is 10 of us in each group and its kinda awkward since its so obvious what answer they are looking for. I get that they are trying to get us to work as a team which is something we obviously need when working in a hospital but it just feels very artificial to the point of making a mockery out of team work.

Like right now we are doing cardiopulmonary, our test is tomorrow. We had 4 lectures on EKGs given by cardiologists explaining how they they work exactly and EKG signs that only a cardiologist would know. A few days before the test they give us a list of the pathologies we need to know on EKG and they are pretty much all the ones in First Aid with 2 or 3 extra. So why have four 2 hour lectures on EKGs. The cardiologists even told us we wouldnt totally understand them. Feels like a waste of time when we could be studying for something we could remember for the long term. Im glad to hear that my school isnt the only one like this though...

yep. I wish that during MS2 I had really made my self focus on step I style basic sciences. I think that I would have learned better in a more structured, traditional curriculum.. I didn't realize how much I was missing out. PBL works marvelously for some people, I am not one of those people.

here, they barely know what a USMLE is.. let alone prepare students for it. my peers are almost guaranteed a training post after graduation (provided they aren't complete *****s), so they can dedicate all their time to school. I feel that my usmle revision is detracting from school work, basically I am playing catch up for the past 2.5 years on top of everything else. its pretty tough to find a balance but hey i made this bed for myself to lay in so....
anyways i can't wait for it to be over! best of luck to you

 

[akhan283]

oh and... i am done with pbl now, that was just years 1 and 2. maybe you can try learning everything in first aid that pertains to which ever case you are working on in PBL. i wish I would have done that instead of waiting until now to think about boards when basic sciences is over. if they are not teaching you what you feel is boards relevent, teach yourself.

 

[qmcat]

I don't think my school does a good job at preparing us for the boards or for medicine in general. The fact that they test us on diseases that are extremely rare or obscure and that we went through the pulmonary systems course without a lecture on pneumonia disappoints me.

I end up having to put in a lot of work on my own time to teach myself about the diseases and things that really matter.

 

[beyondbethany]

This is a common complaint among students at my school, especially in regards to our biochem and micro classes. While I can identify with the frustration (considering how much I shell out every year for school), I don't dwell on it. You should know what the weak points are in your preparation and there are unlimited resources out there for you to make up the difference. Get cozy with FA, Goljan, and select BRS title early on in your program and you be just fine. In reality, you will probably come away with a better understanding of high yield topics if you put in the effort to teach yourself.

 

[Mr hawkings]

The argument that the school will make is that you are paying them to make you a good physician and not to pass boards. So what they deem to be essential to create a "good doctor" is what they will focus on. This may or may not include board prep, depending on what generation the powers that be came from. A lot of them came from the generation when all you needed to do was pass the boards (if there were boards at all).
I've come to accept that only I can prepare myself for boards and not the school. Seems like a waste to pay this much money for a nothing but a bunch of "talks" about "professionalism" instead of board prep but oh well.

 

[Sinister]

The argument that the school will make is that you are paying them to make you a good physician and not to pass boards. So what they deem to be essential to create a "good doctor" is what they will focus on. This may or may not include board prep, depending on what generation the powers that be came from. A lot of them came from the generation when all you needed to do was pass the boards (if there were boards at all).
I've come to accept that only I can prepare myself for boards and not the school. Seems like a waste to pay this much money for a nothing but a bunch of "talks" about "professionalism" instead of board prep but oh well.

Totally agree, we had this one dean that the every two words he spoke had professionalism in it. In the end you yourself will be the best to prepare yourself for the boards.