What if...

[JeetKuneDo]

So I remember eavesdropping on two fellow students before class started. They were talking about how great it would be if "weeding out" for med school started in med school and thought med schools should just allow everyone to be admitted that took pre reqs and passed. What would life be like then....

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[ILikeFood]

It'd be ice cream with chocolate syrup on top!

 

[Marjan Islam]

Hmm, thats really interesting. I think its like that in some parts of the world, I may be wrong. Well, I honestly think we would have a lot more doctors. True a LOT of people would drop out from the stress, but definitely more people would be able to endure it than those that actually get in with the current method.

 

[Nomdeplume]

It seems to me like that would cause medical school to cost the student a great deal more money. From what I've heard, schools actually lose money on every student, despite the enormous tuition. If that's the case, then schools simply wouldn't be able to accommodate more students, and the money would have to come from somewhere else.

It's a nice sentiment, and I'd certainly enjoy less stress in my life, but in the long-run, I think the competition at the pre-med level factors (favorably) into the overall quality of America's healthcare system. True, by some measures it isn't the best, but we have some pretty top-notch research. I think many of our achievments not only enable, but are also partially enabled by, the selectivity of medical schools.

 

[p30doc]

It would be like it is in many other countries.

 

[SB100]

Why make a pre-med waste his/her college career and get to med school to only find out it isn't for him/her? The person would be more productive if they knew earlier in college that medicine is not their desired career path.

 

[stixx]

It would be like it is in many other countries.

Yep, it's like that in most other countries really, and it works fine. Tuition is much cheaper though.

 

[146233]

Some law schools operate similarly (let a ton of people in, kick a boatload out after the first semester/year).

 

[Chemdude]

About the other countries comments:

You can actually buy an MD degree in other countries. My uncle attended medical school at an Eastern European country. Whenever he would fail a course, he'd just bribe the prof and pass with flying colours. Now, he's an accomplished gynecologist.

 

[FrickenhugeMD]

I would imagine that there would be an insane amount of gunning with people doing what ever they can to stay afloat. There wouldn't be much if any collaboration among peers either, which is a necessary part of real medicine.

The real problem is the staffing issue. What if a class of 150 bloated up to 400, 500 or more? It takes a very large number of staff to make sure things are running smoothly at any given med school. Also, what about anatomy? Anatomy is typically the 1st course med students take, and with that comes cadaver dissection. Most schools have around 4-6 students a body. What happens when that gets bumped up to 12 or more to accommodate all these extra people that don't belong there in the first place? There just isnt enough bodies to go around.

Whether you set the bar for admission at the UG level or at the 1st semester or year of med school, there still has to be a bar. Hospitals cant handle that many med students running around them, and if they did the learning environment would drop. Most schools farm students out to the surrounding areas as it is. This idea is merely a fanciful dream of students that probly arent cut out for med school. I am also well aware that some people who could handle med school will enevitably never be able to get in, which sucks for them

 

[fizzle]

So I remember eavesdropping on two fellow students before class started. They were talking about how great it would be if "weeding out" for med school started in med school and thought med schools should just allow everyone to be admitted that took pre reqs and passed. What would life be like then....

It would be a whole lot of waste of corpses for anatomy labs for students who won't even pass. Would people even want to donate their bodies anymore?

 

[Lukkie]

About the other countries comments:

You can actually buy an MD degree in other countries. My uncle attended medical school at an Eastern European country. Whenever he would fail a course, he'd just bribe the prof and pass with flying colours. Now, he's an accomplished gynecologist.

you can do it in america too

 

[URHere]

I remember a nearly identical thread popping up not so long ago. My arguments against such a system last time were:

1) Unlike other countries, the US government does not heavily fund higher education - which means that individual institutions would be responsible for picking up the costs of training additional students. This would mean, hiring additional faculty members, renovating or building entirely new campuses to house students, and budgeting far more for the school's malpractice fund. Also, if such a switch were to happen, it is doubtful that alumni of the school would approve of it, and I doubt donations would be very substantial.

2) The small group components of medical school would suffer greatly, and many would probably be eliminated. Anatomy groups would either balloon in size, or additional bodies would be needed. For some states with multiple medical schools, this increase in need may be impossible to meet. Furthermore, anatomy lab requires resources (people preparing the bodies, physicians volunteering their time to help assist students, fourth year students to prosect, etc), and those resources aren't easy to come by.

Also, the recent trend towards PBL or small group learning would all but be eliminated (I know, some of you would be very happy about this, but still). There just isn't the manpower to have facilitators for so many small groups, not even for those designed to teach clinical skills. I don't know about you, but I don't think medical education would be the same without the ability to practice things like suturing, taking abuse histories, or performing eye/ear/etc exams in small groups.

Many electives and shadowing programs for students would go down the tubes because demand would exceed what the university could supply. Advising would be sub par, and the institutions would be so overwhelmed by the sheer number of students that it would probably take an eternity for student support offices to even fix simple problems. And just forget about early clinical exposure - a system like this one just wouldn't allow for it.

3) There would be many problems associated with clinical training if enough students didn't fail out of the system prior to third year. Exactly who is supposed to supervise these students? And are they really going to learn much if they are forced to travel around in large groups that limit how much each student can actually do or learn?

4) It would severely impact the student body if students were allowed to come to school, make friends, and then watch those friends fail out. Depression can already be a part of medical education, and this system would only add to that. Need for counseling would go through the roof, especially since american students aren't used to losing classmates, and guess what? Once again, the funds wouldn't be available.

 

[JeetKuneDo]

Yeah, I agree with many above that the cost of medical education would probably go up. The first thought that popped to my mind when hearing these two talk was that this would pretty much be like a Caribbean med school. Tuition would be higher, people would have to drop out as they get weeded out, and, assuming the amount of residency spots remain the same (would they remain the same?), a lot of people are going to get crushed from the amount of debt they can't pay back. I agree that competition makes us have an overall better quality of healthcare and research. It's also nice to know that getting into med school in the US almost always guarantees a job in the US, might not always be the job you want, but you won't be living on the streets. I don't think the same can be said if you go Carribean as the risks are really really high.

 

[Joannavr]

It would be a whole lot of waste of corpses for anatomy labs for students who won't even pass. Would people even want to donate their bodies anymore?

To combat this they should make the only requirement to get into medical school that one of your elderly relatives sign over their body to the school after death. Problem solved.