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MPH
- Thread starter bond80009
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Have you been to the following website? It may or may not answer some questions for you.
http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Homepage/About/Committees/CPH/MDMPHGUIDE.aspx
http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Homepage/About/Committees/CPH/MDMPHGUIDE.aspx
I read the site, but i dint get a clear cut answer as to whether the benefits of MPH outweigh the time commitment.
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Unless it ties into your professional goals, why even consider it? Because it's there?
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Well go for it if you want to put a lot of letters behind your name on your door and your id card: dr bond80009 md mph ba faacp
generally the more random letters people put behind their name, the more self-important they are
i'm tired of looking at random alphabet soup as if i'm supposed to know what all that crap means because really the only letters i care about are rn and md
leave your lame-o degrees and awards on your wall
in b4 wat about do
generally the more random letters people put behind their name, the more self-important they are
i'm tired of looking at random alphabet soup as if i'm supposed to know what all that crap means because really the only letters i care about are rn and md
leave your lame-o degrees and awards on your wall
in b4 wat about do
Yeah, im not really sure about my professional goals yet. Im doing it because it might help with residency applications, and it might help on usmle as my school otherwise does not cover biostats, epidemiology, ethics at all.
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MPH classes won't help you on Step 1. First Aid and Kaplan will cover those Behavioral subjects thoroughly.
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Everyone knows MPHs are bull**** degrees. A CP monkey can do well in those courses. Do it if you want more letters after your name, that's about it.
I still cant decide what to do, according to this website: http://publichealth.tufts.edu/Acade...r-Degrees-and-Accreditation/MD-MPH/MD-MPH-FAQ "We think the MPH is a major boost in terms of residency matching."
I also don't have too many other extracurriculars. 1. Will there be even a minor boost to my residency application. 2. Will that boost be worth the time.
I also don't have too many other extracurriculars. 1. Will there be even a minor boost to my residency application. 2. Will that boost be worth the time.
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id do it if its free
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Unless you're interested in PH (career/research goals) don't do an MPH.
It won't help significantly for residency and certainly won't make up for low grades/step scores.
You can easily study biostats/epidemiology/ethics on your own with review books and q banks.
Yes.
No.
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I disagree. I thought that I had a very good understanding of biostats/epi after taking step 1 but after taking 1 semester consisting of 2 epi + biostats + SAS classes I look back and realize how little I actually knew. While I am not necessarily advocating that the OP pursue an MPH, there is certainly much to be gained through exposure to intensive biostats/epi classes that one will not receive in a medical education (and definitely not review book/qbanks... that's just ridiculous)
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Whether the benefits outweigh the time commitment depends on the person. Time management skills, difficulty of the program, and quality of the program are all individual attributes. One consistent theme I hear from graduates of our one-year mph program is they feel way more competent at critically appraising the literature, including the statistical methods.
To those who say the mph is worthless, I direct you to this jama study showing residents' knowledge of basic statistics is abysmal, and factors associated with higher scores included prior advanced training. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/Mobile/article.aspx?articleid=208638
Edit: the survey used in the study is publicly available, so take it and decide whether Kaplan review is really sufficient to understand the methods and results section of the medical literature.
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True but I was referring to studying basic epi/biostats for USMLE exams.
If you want an intensive understanding of those subjects, MPH courses would definitely be far better.
That being said, you really don't need all those courses for the handful of straightforward questions you'll see on step 1.
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don't want to derail the thread too much, but I remember reading somewhere that some programs can help fund your mph during residency. would asking about this be acceptable in an interview at such programs?
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I did an MPH year with epi concentration between M3 and 4 and liked it a lot (for many different reasons other than just the epi training, though). There are definitely residency/fellowship programs that offer clinical epi electives and even free MPH training (although I think this is more common in more research-oriented fellowships than residencies), so there are opportunities beyond med school.
There is A LOT more to epi/biostats than what we learn in med school. While it's not critical to be able to perform multivariate logistic regression or survival analysis yourself, I personally feel comfortable handling large, complex databases and doing most of the statistical analysis after my training. (One year of training barely grazes the surface, but you'll learn most of the bread-and-butter stuff to do the analysis for most clinical research manuscripts.) Not all statisticians understand the clinical nuances of how each data cleaning/variable creation step affects the results and readability of the data. Even if you're not doing the analysis yourself, you need to understand how your statistician is handling your data to work as a team and actualize better products.
That being said, I did a lot of work outside of my classes to make sure I learned how to apply and advance the concepts and skills I learned during my MPH classes. If you want to take a year off to improve your residency application, you need to go the extra mile beyond your classes. Have plans for research/volunteer projects, global health trips abroad, etc. and do some work ahead of time to make sure that you'll have finished products before ERAS goes live. And finally, you'll have to decide for yourself if there are opportunities (e.g., paid research fellowships) that are better-suited for your purposes and aspirations. An MPH degree doesn't have the boost that PhD does and it won't make up for poor board scores or clinical grades.
There is A LOT more to epi/biostats than what we learn in med school. While it's not critical to be able to perform multivariate logistic regression or survival analysis yourself, I personally feel comfortable handling large, complex databases and doing most of the statistical analysis after my training. (One year of training barely grazes the surface, but you'll learn most of the bread-and-butter stuff to do the analysis for most clinical research manuscripts.) Not all statisticians understand the clinical nuances of how each data cleaning/variable creation step affects the results and readability of the data. Even if you're not doing the analysis yourself, you need to understand how your statistician is handling your data to work as a team and actualize better products.
That being said, I did a lot of work outside of my classes to make sure I learned how to apply and advance the concepts and skills I learned during my MPH classes. If you want to take a year off to improve your residency application, you need to go the extra mile beyond your classes. Have plans for research/volunteer projects, global health trips abroad, etc. and do some work ahead of time to make sure that you'll have finished products before ERAS goes live. And finally, you'll have to decide for yourself if there are opportunities (e.g., paid research fellowships) that are better-suited for your purposes and aspirations. An MPH degree doesn't have the boost that PhD does and it won't make up for poor board scores or clinical grades.
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