More worthless class than histology?

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notbobtrustme said:
I think not.
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Histology helps you learn to visually identify pathologies.

The most worthless class is ethics, cause you don't need ethics in the game, baby.

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histo is actually pretty important IMO in understanding pathology since you need to have an idea of what it looks like healthy so you can comprehend what the disease process is doing.
 
Histology is actually quite helpful. For path, yeah, but also it helped me understand some of the material in anatomy if I could actually visualize stuff.

Most worthless class is a tie between PBL and ethics. If someone is determined to act unethically, I'm pretty sure a meaningless class on it in med school isn't going to stop them.
 
almostanmd said:
histology is actually quite helpful. For path, yeah, but also it helped me understand some of the material in anatomy if i could actually visualize stuff.

Most worthless class is a tie between pbl and ethics. If someone is determined to act unethically, i'm pretty sure a meaningless class on it in med school isn't going to stop them.
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+1
 
I second the ethics. The lack of a clearcut answer is what bugs me. I can figure out the 'I have no idea what the right answer is' without a class.
 
Histo is important not only for pathologists, but also for dermatologists and heme/oncs (and to a lesser extent radoncs and surgoncs). Point is, you may one day enter a field that requires a knowledge of histo, so you should make an effort to learn it as best as you can.
 
A good crash-course in histology is pretty vital to understanding pathology. Whether you do normal histology alongside pathology or normal then path, you have to do both.

Doing path without histo is like doing pathophys without phys. Cannot be done. Have to be able to appreciate normal to be able to understand abnormal.
 
We don't have much of a real histology class and I never had a problem with pathology or understanding the stuff. We looked at digital slides every now and then, but the cell bio part was what was hammered in more than the histology. It is pretty useless.

Ethics is something that feels useless, but there are things that are fuzzy and prior introspection can pay off in the end.
 
Ironheme said:
I second the ethics. The lack of a clearcut answer is what bugs me. I can figure out the 'I have no idea what the right answer is' without a class.
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I'm not sure how far you are in med school, but the lack of clear cut answers doesn't end with ethics. There are tons of medical problems that don't have clear answers; it is part of what frustrates the hell out of patients. They think physicians know everything about every single disease, but that is certainly not the case (as you will come to find).
 
Dr Yiot said:
maybe embryo or biochem.
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This is probably the worst answer. You will ALWAYS use biochem, maybe not everything to do with amino acids at the beginning, but most metabolic diseases will have a foothold in biochemistry and embryology is great because you can understand why a few diseases happen, for example, horseshoe kidneys.
 
ManaPool said:
This is probably the worst answer. You will ALWAYS use biochem, maybe not everything to do with amino acids at the beginning, but most metabolic diseases will have a foothold in biochemistry and embryology is great because you can understand why a few diseases happen, for example, horseshoe kidneys.
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lol, yeah it's super important to know why a horseshoe kidney happens. though I agree with you that biochem is important because of the tie in with pathology, though much of it is beyond the scope that we should be going into.
 
Probably not
 
ManaPool said:
This is probably the worst answer. You will ALWAYS use biochem, maybe not everything to do with amino acids at the beginning, but most metabolic diseases will have a foothold in biochemistry and embryology is great because you can understand why a few diseases happen, for example, horseshoe kidneys.
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:bullcrap:
 
Stellar Clouds said:
I'm not sure how far you are in med school, but the lack of clear cut answers doesn't end with ethics. There are tons of medical problems that don't have clear answers; it is part of what frustrates the hell out of patients. They think physicians know everything about every single disease, but that is certainly not the case (as you will come to find).
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Oh that's fine, but the entire ethics class (at least mine) is ALL uncertainty. At least with pathology courses you have an answer MOST of the time. You can say 'well we know x, y but not sure about z; here's the theories' or it can be 'here's the disease, we're not sure how the autoimmunity portion of it works atm.' With ethics though, all the issues are 'well you you could argue it either way - there is no right answer.'
 
I thought histology was actually one of the few useful first year classes. It didn't seem like it when we were taking it but the importance becomes obvious once you start second year as others have mentioned.

(sent from my phone)
 
ManaPool said:
This is probably the worst answer. You will ALWAYS use biochem, maybe not everything to do with amino acids at the beginning, but most metabolic diseases will have a foothold in biochemistry and embryology is great because you can understand why a few diseases happen, for example, horseshoe kidneys.
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Biochemistry is literally worthless after step 1. I don't need to know the substrate for the third step in the Krebs cycle to prescribe a medication or treat a patient. You literally cannot get more worthless than biochem (outside of the research lab, of course)

Relatively speaking, embryology is worthless too outside of peds
 
Ironheme said:
Oh that's fine, but the entire ethics class (at least mine) is ALL uncertainty. At least with pathology courses you have an answer MOST of the time. You can say 'well we know x, y but not sure about z; here's the theories' or it can be 'here's the disease, we're not sure how the autoimmunity portion of it works atm.' With ethics though, all the issues are 'well you you could argue it either way - there is no right answer.'
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I'm embarrassed to say that I actually struggle with the ethics questions on step 1... 🙁

I don't have any trouble with eliminating the obviously incorrect choices, but I'm usually stuck between two that I think are totally legitimate depending upon your perspective. The pretty weak justifications for one choice over another just make the point that there isn't really a "right" answer - only one that you're "supposed" to give.
 
Nutrition.... same crap every lecture. Avoid McD, eat fruit/veg. No-one is ever going to ask the daily amount of selenium a 45 year old diabetic Asian needs - and if they do, one looks it up.
 
Hated histo and didn't get it's importance as an MS1. Realize how important it is as an MS2 (still doesn't mean I like it).
 
NickNaylor said:
I'm embarrassed to say that I actually struggle with the ethics questions on step 1... 🙁

I don't have any trouble with eliminating the obviously incorrect choices, but I'm usually stuck between two that I think are totally legitimate depending upon your perspective. The pretty weak justifications for one choice over another just make the point that there isn't really a "right" answer - only one that you're "supposed" to give.
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You're not alone. If you're aiming for 240, 250, or 260+, you really can't afford to miss ethics questions. Do the practice questions in BRS behavioral science: once you get a hnag of how the writers want you to think, you'll find subsequent questions to be easier
 
How important is pathology to the practice of medicine/Step I (as in actual path slides, not pathphys)?

Like, how often do doctors actually look at a path slide and have to know what's going on vs what the pathologist just said. I can't imagine too many doctors actually look at slides during their career but I could be dead wrong about this.
 
notbobtrustme said:
How important is pathology to the practice of medicine/Step I (as in actual path slides, not pathphys)?

Like, how often do doctors actually look at a path slide and have to know what's going on vs what the pathologist just said. I can't imagine too many doctors actually look at slides during their career but I could be dead wrong about this.
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I think that characterization is right. But there are some fields where it's a part of the everyday job (pathology) and some where it is a not insignificant part (e.g., derm).
 
notbobtrustme said:
How important is pathology to the practice of medicine/Step I (as in actual path slides, not pathphys)?

Like, how often do doctors actually look at a path slide and have to know what's going on vs what the pathologist just said. I can't imagine too many doctors actually look at slides during their career but I could be dead wrong about this.
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Derm for sure, many do this on a daily basis.
 
goddamnt, guess I gotta sack up and learn this ****🙁
 
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To be honest, I dunno if I actually needed to use the histology knowledge to do well in pathology class and especially Step 1. The images they give on path questions on Step 1, I was able to get them right just by path knowledge alone. In addition, our histology class was sooooooo boring 🙁
 
CodeBlu said:
Agreed.

Folding... more folding.

And, what the eff is a coelom... there's about 5857 of them.
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This post literally made me LOL.

I think PBL is the most worthless "class."
 
I like the cases we discuss in ethics, but when the first hour is just a general ethics lecture... this pretty much sums up the class vibe within 5 minutes:

34p1h7r.gif


I can't really say that any of my first year classes have been a complete waste of time. I didn't particularly care for histo, but apparently it becomes more relevant during pathology, so I remain slightly optimistic. Did you all have a separate embryo class or was it incorporated into histo lecture?
 
Only an M1, but our school's curriculum integrates everything so we go by systems. Now that we're doing system-specific histo, I actually find it useful sometimes because the histo can help explain the physio and the anatomy. They all start to work together well so it's another way to logic yourself to the right answer.
 
NeuroLAX said:
I like the cases we discuss in ethics, but when the first hour is just a general ethics lecture... this pretty much sums up the class vibe within 5 minutes:

34p1h7r.gif


I can't really say that any of my first year classes have been a complete waste of time. I didn't particularly care for histo, but apparently it becomes more relevant during pathology, so I remain slightly optimistic. Did you all have a separate embryo class or was it incorporated into histo lecture?
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We had a separate embryo "course" (basically the first week of anatomy). Also useless.
 
KnuxNole said:
To be honest, I dunno if I actually needed to use the histology knowledge to do well in pathology class and especially Step 1. The images they give on path questions on Step 1, I was able to get them right just by path knowledge alone. In addition, our histology class was sooooooo boring 🙁
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I heard the histo question writters for step 1 were absorbed by path a few years back, meaning almost all slides will be path/written by pathologists.
 
The problem with histo is that it's only useful for pathology in M2. You probably won't hardly use it afterward unless you go into pathology. As for embryo...well, I've had a patient with intestinal malrotation before. Yeah...It loses a lot of its luster if you aren't going into peds. Honestly, I found most of M1 to be pretty useless except for physiology.
 
NickNaylor said:
We had a separate embryo "course" (basically the first week of anatomy). Also useless.
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We've barely had any embryo. What embryo we have had was scattered throughout histo. I think we are going to have a little more incorporated into neuroanatomy. Does the USMLE test a fair amount of embryo? That's what I'm most worried about considering how little exposure to embryo I've had thus far.
 
MilkmanAl said:
Let's put it this way: the 5-6 pages in First Aid were more than enough.
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OK, that's assuring. I literally had only about 10-15 pages at the end of the histo packet plus small tidbits scattered throughout the rest of the systems topics in histo. Since I'll be taking both exams I want to be sure that I'm not missing anything due to any minor differences in emphasis placed on certain topics. Thanks 👍
 
Yeah my school doesn't do much embryo either, it's just scattered throughout anatomy and occasionally when we cover a congenital illness in path lectures.

By far the most useless is our epidemiology course...i.e., biostats 101 (learning specificity, sensitivity, risk, etc.). The meat of the course could have been covered in a single one hour lecture, yet we continue to have 2 hour sessions on it throughout first AND second year where we beat a pulverized horse.

Tied with that is ethics.

Histo is helpful, I think. I did not enjoy it at the time and didn't see the point, but it has been nice having that foundation come path time. Also our histo course is massive, so ends up covering quite a bit of anatomy, biochem, path, which was a good intro. Looking back, it's much clearer why they have you do it.
 
BeastInfection said:
By far the most useless is our epidemiology course...i.e., biostats 101 (learning specificity, sensitivity, risk, etc.). The meat of the course could have been covered in a single one hour lecture, yet we continue to have 2 hour sessions on it throughout first AND second year where we beat a pulverized horse.
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We only had a 2 hour lecture on biostats. :woot: I'm assuming the few pages First Aid devotes to biostats is sufficient?
 
NeuroLAX said:
We only had a 2 hour lecture on biostats. :woot: I'm assuming the few pages First Aid devotes to biostats is sufficient?
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Consider yourself lucky. Our's is sporadic--10-ish sessions per year, but the sessions are mandatory, looooong and you feel every second of it. It's a full course with quizzes, a final, etc. 😴😴
 
BeastInfection said:
Consider yourself lucky. Our's is sporadic--10-ish sessions per year, but the sessions are mandatory, looooong and you feel every second of it. It's a full course with quizzes, a final, etc. 😴😴
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:barf:

That sucks. I paid my dues to biostats a couple years ago.
 
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