What are med school professors/Doctors like compared to undergrad professors?

[mrh125]

I'm an undergrad going to med school next year and i'm just wondering.

Are they like undergraduate professors where most of them tend to be researchers and have to teach on the side? I'm also wondering how courses are structured. Like in my undergrad I had to do a lot of stuff that I'd consider to be busy work, such as research papers, group projects, and other busy work in discussion sections. Are those still around? (Ideally I'd hope for classes that are just 100% tests but that's just me). Also, what are other students like generally?

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[yehhhboiii]

if you have pbl you'll do some sitting around a table and talking about medical stuff with classmates
there are a decent number of pure researchers but there are also a lot of medical doctors. so if you're talking about the heart, you might have a ph.d. guy talking about cardiac physiology, a pathologist talking about cardiac pathology and a cardiologist talking about pathophysiology.
but essays, projects, etc. are replaced by hours of studying

it's like high school except everyone is smart and/or hard working. gossip travels fast. don't do stupid things around classmates because you might wake up the next morning and find that everyone knows

 

[D elegans]

Yep, less busy work, more studying, higher-stakes tests

 

[dr zaius]

The same except they are more likely to not show up to give you a lecture.

 

[Brain Bucket]

At our school, they appear to keep getting better as we advance. Hopefully it's a trend.

 

[pathologyDO]

The professors are paid better and have higher standards to meet otherwise they would be thrown out rather fast I'd imagine, as we're given the opportunity to rate our professors at the end of every section. So far, our professors have been more enjoyable to listen to than undergrad profs and are incredibly knowledgable about the subjects they teach. Most of them have either been PhD w/ post-doc, MD/DO, or a slew of other titles.

Tl;dr
for me, the prof quality went up from undergrad to med school

 

[shaggy alfresco]

Yep, less busy work, more studying, higher-stakes tests

Except Step 1, not really. But hey, I'm going into peds, not gunning for integrated plastics, so it's a bit different I suppose 😛. Though obviously the top places, even in peds, will have a much higher step 1 score than mine.


In the end, first two year scores don't matter for anything except as much as they prepare you for Step 1. Then your third year matters quite a bit.

 

[Stellar Clouds]

At our school, they appear to keep getting better as we advance. Hopefully it's a trend.

Did it switch from mainly PhDs to MDs as you advanced?

It did at my school, and the quality and stress of the clinically relevant info went way up.

 

[Brain Bucket]

Did it switch from mainly PhDs to MDs as you advanced?

It did at my school, and the quality and stress of the clinically relevant info went way up.

The first year courses were taught mostly by HoDs who are all MD/PhDs. The second year courses are being taught by specialists (who are also MD/PhDs), eg. The Cardio block of pathophys is being taught by the fellow who heads IM Cardio at the affiliated hosp. Same thing with the other Blocks. The only exception is pathology, where they rotate but they all REALLY know their stuff, so no complaints. They're also younger this year, with a better command of English and a great sense of humor, so I suppose that helps. The 3rd and 4th years say that the people teaching at the hospital are even better and come back everyday from rotations with some great stories. Something to look forward to.

 

[tantacles]

Did it switch from mainly PhDs to MDs as you advanced?

It did at my school, and the quality and stress of the clinically relevant info went way up.

First year was almost exclusively PhDs with the exception of a few fantastic lecturers. Our GI lecturer in anatomy, for example, was a general surgeon and gave an exam that was challenging but incredibly rewarding; I predicted almost the entire exam based on what seemed clinically relevant mainly because his lectures were interesting, well-organized, and to the point.

Some switched at my school after first year. Pathology is almost exclusively taught by MDs, and as a result, it's a fascinating course. Microbiology and pharmacology are more of the same ****; tons of random PhDs who never took the boards and never will have to, meaning most of them really don't care about relevance. There are a few exceptions. For example, our cancer drug lecturer was fantastic despite being a PhD and came with a lot of helpful (and sometimes inappropriate) mnemonics.

In any case, though, a common theme has been that education at my school is more about the educator than about promoting easier learning. Class is officially optional, but most faculty still would prefer we came. And that's really too bad; I refuse.

 

[Law2Doc]

Did it switch from mainly PhDs to MDs as you advanced?

It did at my school, and the quality and stress of the clinically relevant info went way up.

Part of it is that the information is more obviously clinically useful. Part of it is that you get much more enthusiastic lecturers when they are volunteering to do it because it seems like something "fun" rather than something they are obligated to do on top of their research. I think this is the case regardless of whether they are MD or PhD. The guys who are physiologists and part of the permanent med school faculty often can't really get as fired up when on their annual run through of the same material, year after year, while the clinician invited in to do a single lecture every now and then because he expressed some interest in doing some teaching is often pumped up for the experience. (This isn't really "work" for him).

 

[zeppelinpage4]

So far about the same, but most of the professors our first semester are PhDs so it's like college. One noticeable difference though is we definitely seemed to be treated more like adults and equals. They're a little less professional with us which is nice. Quality of teaching seems to vary, there's some good lecturers and some bad ones, so that's still the same as in undergrad.