Should PhDs be teaching us?

[DoctaJay]

At first this question seemed stupid to me, but the more I think about it, I realize that the best lecturers we have are M.D.s. The PhDs are Ok, but they seem to often go off on tangents and are prone to make us memorize low-yield information. I certainly value their importance in medicine, but I was wondering if I was the only one that wished that all of our lectures were taught by M.D.'s who could at a whim give us clinical correlations that could can't already read in a BRS book.

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[nonesuchgirl]

MD/PhDs, yeah. Straight up PhD, not for things with direct clinical correlations.

 

[DocPsychosis]

We have had some great MD lecturers, and some poor ones. We have also had great PhD lecturers, and poor ones. I don't have a problem with it; how many MDs want to take an hour out of their day to teach about the citric acid cycle? I feel like we get a good mix of basic science from PhDs and clinical correlates from MDs.

 

[Blade28]

Usually the MDs will be able to give you more clinically relevant information - but some PhDs are used to preparing students for Step 1.

 

[Blesbok]

I think PhDs with hospital experience (such as biochemists and microbiologists) can do a great job teaching. However, there is nothing I hate more than when they focus a major part of a lecture on their research that will never in a million years show up on boards.

 

[Occams Razor]

Most of the professors at my school are PhDs. To me, it's a detriment. As DoctaJay referenced, they tend to teach low yield information. Ive noticed other differences as well at my school.

- They specialize in their specific areas, and emphasize material more relevant to research, lab work, or theory than actual clinical practice.

- They don't give many clinical cases or mnemonics to help remember the information, whereas MDs tend to.

- Many have hostile or negative attitudes toward students, as if they're angry that we're granted a medical career that they possibly wanted. The MD professors tend to be helpful and excited to help the student doctors succeed

I understand that they're experts in their own field, but I'd choose a MD professor any day. I should have researched that more in depth when choosing between medical schools I was accepted to.

 

[OncoCaP]

My school has high board scores in part due to excellent teaching by certain key Ph.D.'s (and MD's). You want people who teach well, whether they are MD's or Ph.D's. An MD does not necessarily mean "good teacher"; some are busy with their clinical work and don't really have as much time to prepare. If anything, some of the Ph.D.'s have an in-depth understanding that enables them to connect related concepts in a memorable way. Some of our weaker teachers have been MD's. Ironically, one of the very best surgeons I know who does some of the most leading-edge surgeries in that field shows little talent when it comes to lecture-style teaching (that MD is better at teaching small groups). Superficial thought that MD are necessarily better teachers is not going to go very far. This reminds me of the kind of logic I saw from some guests on Larry King tonight {We have more autism; we vaccinate our kids; therefore vaccinations cause autism. Drug companies donate to the AAP; therefore the APA is going to cover up the side-effects of vaccinations.} Sometimes you need to dig a little deeper to figure out what is going on.

 

[HEADintheCLOUDS]

MD's are way better lecturers!

Lets say this:

MD = University

PHD= Community College

 

[Slide]

For me it doesn't matter what letters you have after your name, it's about the lecturer's philosophy towards the students. Some look out for the best interests of the students as future physicians, while others treat it as a chore. MDs and Ph.Ds can fall into both of these categories.

 

[cpants]

Yes. PhD's should be teaching us for the first two years. In general, someone with a PhD in biochemistry, say, will have a lot more expertise than an MD who took a semester of it in medical school and has stayed up on his reading. In the same way, a Business in Medicine course should probably be taught by an MBA with some medical experience rather than an MD with some business experience. In my opinion, we want the leading experts in the subject teaching us at all times.

 

[vtucci]

Like most of the above posters, I have had some truly exceptional lecturers with PhDs and some with MDs. Similarly, I have had some abyssmal lecturers with PhDs and some with MDs. MDs, on a whole though, were better with more clinically relevant lectures in my first two years. I have found lectures during third year to be mostly a waste of time.

I agree that someone who has a PhD in biochemistry will have substantially more experience in that field than an MD. That being said, I think the first two years of medical education need to be overhauled. There is too much information to allow people to go off into tangents and teach on their esoteric area of interest.

The courses should be applied biochemistry/clinical biochem, applied anatomy or clinical anatomy, clinical pharmacology, clinical molecular bio/genetics, clinical pathophysiology etc. These courses can absolutely be taught by MDs.

 

[Maxprime]

I think the issue is much more, "Should researchers or clinicians be teaching us basic science?" An MD or PhD (or both) that is in a lab and reading papers in basic science journals for an hour or two every day is going to be much more up to date on the trends and newer discoveries in basic science. Obviously the TCA isn't going to be rediscovered this week, but if you have to learn biochemistry in a snapshot in time then you want to have the most up to date theories that are available.

 

[dilated]

Yes. PhD's should be teaching us for the first two years. In general, someone with a PhD in biochemistry, say, will have a lot more expertise than an MD who took a semester of it in medical school and has stayed up on his reading. In the same way, a Business in Medicine course should probably be taught by an MBA with some medical experience rather than an MD with some business experience. In my opinion, we want the leading experts in the subject teaching us at all times.

Do you really need all that much expertise to teach the citric acid cycle? We are not learning it at the level of PhDs (for good reason). The PhD's extra knowledge of how lactate has an extra feedback mechanism that isn't in our notes, FA or on Step 1 is utterly useless to us.

With that being said, lecture quality isn't that strongly related to degree, it's mostly related to the number of lectures you give. The PhDs who gave us 30 lectures and had been doing it for years were primarily educators, not research PhDs, and were thus good teachers who knew how to present material. The worst lectures are invariably the "world expert" research PhD who comes in for 1 lecture of mind numbingly useless super-nitpicky factoids.

 

[FFwannabeMD]

MD's are way better lecturers!

Lets say this:

MD = University

PHD= Community College

HEADintheCLOUDS, you are a *****. 🙄

On a more relevant note, I have a special place in my heart for the PhDs at my school - they are absolutely brilliant. They do occasionally get side-tracked by details, but it's usually because they're passionate about a certain topic. It's pretty cute. The worst have been the anatomy PhD's... they are such fussy prima donnas for men who play with cadavers all day. We've had some fair MD lecturers, but I take their teaching to be more valuable in terms of giving you a forecast for your career. I learn from their experience more than factual knowledge. But when it comes down to explaining complicated science concepts, the PhDs win it for me every time.

 

[notdeadyet]

Yes. PhD's should be teaching us for the first two years. In general, someone with a PhD in biochemistry, say, will have a lot more expertise than an MD who took a semester of it in medical school and has stayed up on his reading. In the same way, a Business in Medicine course should probably be taught by an MBA with some medical experience rather than an MD with some business experience. In my opinion, we want the leading experts in the subject teaching us at all times.

Couldn't agree more. Med students seem to really harp on MDs teaching, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by the idea.

Clinical correlates are fine, but a Ph.D. can pick up as many as he needs by some discussions of his lectures with an MD. Especially for the sake of your first two years' education.

As for teaching to the boards and mnemonics and whatnot, these are what review books are for. I have no problems with teachers just trying to teach and leaving preparing for the boards to be left up to me. The best way to learn material for a standardized test is to learn the material well.

I don't expect instructors to give me mnemonics or Step 1 tricks anymore than I expect them to make flashcards for me.

 

[45408]

anymore than I expect them to make flashcards for me.

Yours don't? Guess you shoulda come here.

 

[SugarNaCl]

😉 Dental student here, but I did a search for something and found this thread. I have my MS in neuroimmunology, worked as a research assistant at a cancer hospital for 3 years and am in dental school. I have attended a LOT of seminars, conferences and lectures with both PhDs and MDs (oncology) including my supervisor at the hospital (MD/PhD). From listening to all of them, I'd have to say that MD/PhD was best, followed by PhD, followed by MD for mechanistics of disease. Many MDs I had spoken with/ listened to could tell you how to diagnose, how to treat but few could relay to me more detailed information I wanted to know about the process unless it was something that they dealt with CONSTANTLY (ie in this case prostate cancer). Why for general science lectures would you want that? I think in both medicine and dentistry a mix of the 2 would be beneficial. Mechanistics (PhD) AND clinical correlation (MD).

 

[dilated]

Many MDs I had spoken with/ listened to could tell you how to diagnose, how to treat but few could relay to me more detailed information I wanted to know about the process unless it was something that they dealt with CONSTANTLY (ie in this case prostate cancer). Why for general science lectures would you want that?

You may be slightly misinformed about how the lecturer selection process works. They don't go over to the hospital and kidnap the first MD they see and tell them to give a talk on it immediately. 😛

Generally they are specialists in it to begin with and obviously they have lots of advance time to read up on the subject and how it is presented to medical students. Lack of knowledge is rarely a problem for professors (of any degree) in medical schools. Knowing how to emphasize which knowledge people should care about beyond the test next week, on the other hand...

 

[UES Girl]

😱😱

At first this question seemed stupid to me, but the more I think about it, I realize that the best lecturers we have are M.D.s. The PhDs are Ok, but they seem to often go off on tangents and are prone to make us memorize low-yield information. I certainly value their importance in medicine, but I was wondering if I was the only one that wished that all of our lectures were taught by M.D.'s who could at a whim give us clinical correlations that could can't already read in a BRS book.

Is this a real thread ? 😱😱😱

I was scrolling down the page to my forum and this caught my eye so much I jush had to read this thread. I am not a med student - but I fail to see how someone who only graduated med school and took maybe 1 semester of a certain subject will be better at it than a Ph. D who not only spent 5-6 years studying while pursuing a Ph. D, and a few years as a postdoc but maybe an entire lifetime dedicated to learning that subject.

 

[notdeadyet]

Yours don't? Guess you shoulda come here.

Hell, Prowler, if I didn't have flashcards to take care of each night, what would I do with myself?

 

[notdeadyet]

I fail to see how someone who only graduated med school and took maybe 1 semester of a certain subject will be better at it than a Ph. D who not only spent 5-6 years studying while pursuing a Ph. D, and a few years as a couple years as a postdoc but maybe an entire lifetime dedicated to learning that subject.

Exactly. PhD's have more experience in a specific subject matter; MDs have more experience in the application of that specific subject matter. This is why PhD's predominantly teach you the first two years and MD's predominantly teach you the second two years.

It's great having MDs in the classroom, but you wouldn't be able to stack a med school entirely with MD instructors without losing a whole lot of subject matter expertise. The reason that you don't get out of undergrad and start residency is that someone somewhere thinks the theory will make you a better physician.

 

[45408]

Hell, Prowler, if I didn't have flashcards to take care of each night, what would I do with myself?

I have to shepherd mine fairly closely. I'm thinking of getting a collie just to round them all up each morning. I love flash cards, but I hate making them, so I just don't use them. 😀

 

[nonesuchgirl]

I have to shepherd mine fairly closely. I'm thinking of getting a collie just to round them all up each morning. I love flash cards, but I hate making them, so I just don't use them. 😀

Dork. 😍

 

[SugarNaCl]

You may be slightly misinformed about how the lecturer selection process works. They don't go over to the hospital and kidnap the first MD they see and tell them to give a talk on it immediately. 😛

Generally they are specialists in it to begin with and obviously they have lots of advance time to read up on the subject and how it is presented to medical students. Lack of knowledge is rarely a problem for professors (of any degree) in medical schools. Knowing how to emphasize which knowledge people should care about beyond the test next week, on the other hand...

These were medical school professors. That is my point. The hospital I worked at is affiliated with a medical school and the hospital offers PhD programs as well, in coordination with the University. Many of the physicians practice, teach AND conduct research (some only teach/research). Anyhow, I'm speaking about direct experience only, from what I was able to attend while working there. EVEN MDs aren't experts in EVERY aspect of say histology or physiology. It just seems the PhDs have a broader range. I am not slamming MDs. I know some VERY brilliant ones but their focus and approach is different and even they don't know everything about everything and openly admit it. They ask PhDs many questions, particularly when collaborating on research projects. Clinically on the other hand, I am certain MDs would have the upper hand. I'm certain you already know this and I don't mean to offend anyone here.

 

[vtucci]

The more important question is how many MDs really remember the basic sciences such as the TCA cycle as well as the PhDs who do their research on stuff related to this kind of material and have had experience teaching it for years?

For our purposes though, we do not need to know the TCA cycle in much more detail than Lippincott's can provide. Intracies of biochem and molecular bio are not really practical for most physicians. However, there can be more clinical correlations for these fields (e.g., toxicology).

I agree though the USF has some great PhDs-- mostly in the second year courses (micro/immuno, pharm and path). There were a few stand outs in first year (Dr. Dietz, renal physio) but most in first year were not as good as the MDs in second year. Our class did not many MDs teaching during the first year.

 

[JacobSilge]

One thing that hasn't been brought up much is the fact that first and second year are very different. Classes like Biochem, Genetics, and Histo shouldn't really be taught predominantly by MD's because those who aren't running labs in those areas don't deal with that material on a regular basis. Anatomy & Physiology are more in the middle and you're probably better off with a mix. However, I'm very glad that my Pathology course is being taught exclusively by MD's. Likewise I feel like I'm getting more up to date information on how to realistically prescribe from MD lecturers in Pharm than by PhD pharmacologists (though they were invaluable for the introductory Pharmacodynamics/Pharmacokinetics stuff).

 

[SugarNaCl]

One thing that hasn't been brought up much is the fact that first and second year are very different. Classes like Biochem, Genetics, and Histo shouldn't really be taught predominantly by MD's because those who aren't running labs in those areas don't deal with that material on a regular basis. Anatomy & Physiology are more in the middle and you're probably better off with a mix. However, I'm very glad that my Pathology course is being taught exclusively by MD's. Likewise I feel like I'm getting more up to date information on how to realistically prescribe from MD lecturers in Pharm than by PhD pharmacologists (though they were invaluable for the introductory Pharmacodynamics/Pharmacokinetics stuff).

Perfectly sums up my above made point. Also that it is VERY unrealistic to think that any MD, PhD, DO, DDS, DC, DPM, DVM etc will know even close to half the things in their specialty field or otherwise that are out there. A brilliant doctor (of any academic holding degree) I feel is one that doesn't only admit their mistakes, but one that knows what they DON'T know BEFORE they make that mistake.

 

[Blesbok]

😱😱


Is this a real thread ? 😱😱😱

I was scrolling down the page to my forum and this caught my eye so much I jush had to read this thread. I am not a med student - but I fail to see how someone who only graduated med school and took maybe 1 semester of a certain subject will be better at it than a Ph. D who not only spent 5-6 years studying while pursuing a Ph. D, and a few years as a postdoc but maybe an entire lifetime dedicated to learning that subject.

Application is everything in medicine. PhDs have never applied their medical knowledge in a clinical setting.

 

[notdeadyet]

Application is everything in medicine. PhDs have never applied their medical knowledge in a clinical setting.

But your first couple of years in medical school, you have next to nothing to apply. You need to build up your knowledgebase first, which is what years one and two are about. The PhD's are great for this. In the second two years, you actually have something to apply. MDs are great for this.

 

[SugarNaCl]

But your first couple of years in medical school, you have next to nothing to apply. You need to build up your knowledgebase first, which is what years one and two are about. The PhD's are great for this. In the second two years, you actually have something to apply. MDs are great for this.

EXACTLY... Same in dental school. We have the same professors as the med students for histo, physio, micro, gross, path etc. The PhDs are great for the basic background info...extensive broad knowledge.

 

[Maxprime]

Application is everything in medicine. PhDs have never applied their medical knowledge in a clinical setting.

This is not necessarily always true. Many of the people in my department (neuro) give clinical correlations in lecture that they encountered in their time spent in the clinic.

 

[SeventhSon]

there are great PhD and MD teachers, but I tend to like the PhD teachers better. They care more about mechanisms, which is what your focus should be in years 1 and 2. I find MDs are the ones who "tend" to overload you and test you on BS fun facts.

 

[SugarNaCl]

This is not necessarily always true. Many of the people in my department (neuro) give clinical correlations in lecture that they encountered in their time spent in the clinic.

Seriously. A man that I worked quite a bit with in cancer research, who died this week at 39 had already developed the C oignet Factor test for prostate cancer. It helps MDs determine the best method of treatment depending on how aggressive the cancer is.

I mean these PhDs are SMART and many work in the clinical arena as well (like this man did). Studies have been conducted (not certain of the accuracy but I know it was done on a large sample pool) PhDs are the ones that cap the IQ. More PhDs come out on top of every other profession in the intelligence arena if you use IQ tests as a standard.

IF YOU BELIEVE IN STATISTICS. I'm a skeptic myself. I like the individual approach.

 

[DoctaJay]

😱😱


Is this a real thread ? 😱😱😱

I was scrolling down the page to my forum and this caught my eye so much I jush had to read this thread. I am not a med student - but I fail to see how someone who only graduated med school and took maybe 1 semester of a certain subject will be better at it than a Ph. D who not only spent 5-6 years studying while pursuing a Ph. D, and a few years as a postdoc but maybe an entire lifetime dedicated to learning that subject.

To me, there is very little that these PhD teachers can teach us -that is relevant for Step 1 and practice-- that I can't already read in a book. Every once in awhile they will show a pubmed journal to us that has some novel theory or discovery for something we had learned differently, but even that probably won't be on Step 1.

We certainly have some good PhD teachers here, but I truly feel like they go on tangets way too much. We had a biochem teacher 2 days ago who was giving a lecture on DNA. He had like 10 slides on the history of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. He went on to explain how watson and crick were hitting a wall because they had the nucleotides drawn in the tautomeric form (or something like that)...BUT THEN, a chemist pointed out their mistake and the rest of history. Then he went on to describe how his lab was disproving some of the current theories on different DNA binding conformations, etc. etc. This kind of stuff doesn't happen all the time, but I don't think an MD would get excited over information like this.

Also, there are very few mechanisms that are complicated enough that I can't learn it in a book.

 

[smq123]

To me, there is very little that these PhD teachers can teach us -that is relevant for Step 1 and practice-- that I can't already read in a book. Every once in awhile they will show a pubmed journal to us that has some novel theory or discovery for something we had learned differently, but even that probably won't be on Step 1.

I think this is not because they have PhDs, but rather because they are just crappy teachers. Some people with PhDs are excellent teachers, some people with PhDs are terrible teachers, but it doesn't have anything to do with the degree that they received.

Grad students receive some training on how to effectively "teach," but I get the impression that it's kind of thrown in there as an afterthought.

Course directors (who often have PhDs as well) are allowed to take a mock Step 1, so they can see what is actually relevant material to include in a curriculum. And, of course, the professors who are MDs took Step 1 at one point themselves (although the exam has changed drastically in the last decade). Too bad they don't let ALL med school professors take a mock Step 1....

 

[MSTPbound]

I think this is not because they have PhDs, but rather because they are just crappy teachers. Some people with PhDs are excellent teachers, some people with PhDs are terrible teachers, but it doesn't have anything to do with the degree that they received.

Grad students receive some training on how to effectively "teach," but I get the impression that it's kind of thrown in there as an afterthought.

Course directors (who often have PhDs as well) are allowed to take a mock Step 1, so they can see what is actually relevant material to include in a curriculum. And, of course, the professors who are MDs took Step 1 at one point themselves (although the exam has changed drastically in the last decade). Too bad they don't let ALL med school professors take a mock Step 1....

Agreed - I don't think the effectiveness of teachers is dependent upon the degree so much as the lecturer's teaching ability.

The benefits of an MD professor are obvious... and by extension an MD/PhD professor should offer the best of both worlds. For the effective PhD professors I've seen so far though, I would say that they were superb for being able to gear the lecture towards the class' need, but still communicated a passion for the subject that often comes only from someone who has dedicated their life to immersion in that subject; e.g. - the PhD immunologists who taught immunology transmitted the information with an excitement and mastery of the subject that made the lectures come to life a lot more.

Anyhow, I think we need both - MDs and PhDs - teaching. Perhaps the best case scenario is team-taught lectures led by clinicians and basic scientists.

 

[Maxprime]

Grad students receive some training on how to effectively "teach," but I get the impression that it's kind of thrown in there as an afterthought.

Bah. I've received one lecture about teaching and it was insulting. As a graduate student, there is basically zero personal value to improving your teaching skills. In puppy dog and rainbow land, we would work hard and actually care about our teaching evals. But in reality, every second we spend teaching is time we could be in the lab or working to publish. We do spend time practicing/giving 10-30 minute presentations of our work, but this is for professional and not teaching purposes.

When you see people on their 6th and 7th years in graduate school, it is more than enough to convince you to get out of there ASAP. This means being in lab 24/7 and dodging any teaching that is not mandatory. The problem of crappy teaching due to lack of experience is well known, but there really isn't much you can do about it.

 

[indo]

If physicians taught all of our course blocks we would all get perfect scores. We can't have that. How would we differentiate between students who are terrible at interpreting back-assward questions from students who are just bad at interpreting back-assward questions?

 

[FenderHM]

I agree with OP, 1st year we had all these PhDs, and I did research for a year with a guy with an foreign obtained PhD, and they were just both disappointing and unnecessarily hard experiences on many many levels... the med school classes taught by PhDs IN GENERAL tended to focus on little obscure areas of the sciences where these people were conducting their research, they wouldnt shut up about interleukin 6 because they claimed to have discovered it or something... c'mon we dont need multiple lectures on IL 6, that being said some of the PhD profs we had were great


2nd year has been mostly MDs teaching us and it has been much more interesting, high yield and step-1 relevant

 

[JacobSilge]

I agree with OP, 1st year we had all these PhDs, and I did research for a year with a guy with an foreign obtained PhD, and they were just both disappointing and unnecessarily hard experiences on many many levels... the med school classes taught by PhDs IN GENERAL tended to focus on little obscure areas of the sciences where these people were conducting their research, they wouldnt shut up about interleukin 6 because they claimed to have discovered it or something... c'mon we dont need multiple lectures on IL 6, that being said some of the PhD profs we had were great


2nd year has been mostly MDs teaching us and it has been much more interesting, high yield and step-1 relevant

That's really more a function of 2nd year being better all around.

 

[njbmd]

At first this question seemed stupid to me, but the more I think about it, I realize that the best lecturers we have are M.D.s. The PhDs are Ok, but they seem to often go off on tangents and are prone to make us memorize low-yield information. I certainly value their importance in medicine, but I was wondering if I was the only one that wished that all of our lectures were taught by M.D.'s who could at a whim give us clinical correlations that could can't already read in a BRS book.

I understand your point but here's where you have a problem. You (and most medical students) don't have enough experience in medicine to know what is "low yield" and what is not. Believe me, you will appreciate some of those "low yield" facts and tangents if you ever aspire to practice academic medicine. It is precisely those little details that will separate you from the mid-level practitioners who are clamoring to replace you clinically.

I hold the MD-Ph.D degree combination and loads of those "low yield" facts that I remember from my first two years of medical school made me look polished and knowledgeable when I did clinical rotations at the huge research centers.

At this point in your careers, it is quite understandable that you feel the clinical information is more important than the basic science information but that will change when you hit the wards both as a clinical clerk and as a junior resident. I sat in those classes and complained the same as you but on an Endocrine Surgery rotation at Mayo Clinic (I was a fourth-year), I really appreciated the thorough knowledge that I possessed from my excellent professors from medical school. I knew things that many of the residents didn't understand or know because I had been taught by one of the cutting edge researchers in metabolic syndrome and insulinoma. In short, I knew the talking points of the research.

Yes, you are on "brain overload" and that's the nature of the beast. One thing for sure, you will adjust to this and you will become more facile at organizing the information so that you can make everything "high yield" that is presented to you.

I promise that you WILL be expected to have a very detailed knowledge of your basic science on all of your in-training exams during residency. It is far better to have this exposure than to try to pick up the details as you are trying to learn application of those details. For the general surgery residents, their ABSITE exam for the first two years is geared directly toward basic science. The clinical comes with the senior-level exams.

As an academic surgeon, I promise you that my desk now is filled with papers that are loaded with basic science information (finally my Ph.D comes in handy) from journals like Academic Surgery. One read of New England Journal of Medicine (which you should be reading right now anyway especially the clinical cases) will illustrate the same. It is directly from the Ph.Ds that you get the knowledge that you, the MD will put into practice in the treatment of your patients.

 

[Eddie]

The PhDs generally have expertise in the areas but after watching many lectures of Kaplan, I like the MDs because their info is more relevant. If only the PhD could feed the info to the MD so he/she could be an interpreter. 😀

 

[pseudoknot]

I'm appalled and ashamed that this thread even exists. Obviously someone's degree doesn't have anything to do with how good a teacher they are.