What is it?
Im sitting here studying on a Saturday night wondering what was the point of 4 years of learning random facts that have nothing to do with my career. Sure some of it helps for med school, mainly the cell biology part (I took the minimum requirement/prereqs) but still. Why cant we start earlier, straight out of highschool?
I dont see why we cant have kids take AP chem , ap physics, ap bio, and bum rush organic chem during the summer, hell even have a 5 year MD program, where year 1 is touching up on the prereqs.
First, in high school, one is totally not mature enough to tackle medicine. Medicine is not just "book knowledge." It's the permission that another human being gives to us to divulge their most innermost secrets in confidence, to touch and alter their body (either medically or surgically), and to provide the support that only one who has both the knowledge and experience to do so can provide.
Second, Do you want to be an educated person or an uneducated person? A real physician not only understands what to do but entirely understands why he's doing it. You can't understand why you're giving someone a medication without understanding the reasons for doing so is right or not for that patient, its effects, side effects, things to watch for while giving the patient the medication, its method of action in the body, its pharmacokinetics/dynamics. You can't understand that unless you have a basic understanding of both organic and inorganic chemistry, which is not taught in medical school. You're expected to know that stuff out of the door day one starting med school.
How can you be taught the details of where things can go wrong in glycolysis or the Krebs cycle without knowing first what they are and how they work in biology?
How can you understand the physiology of how the nervous system or cardiovascular system works without knowing basic electromagnetism, fluid dynamics, and kinetics that one learns in physics?
You can't become a doctor without knowing at least the basics, which is what one learns in undergrad. If you think undergrad is too in-depth, you have no idea how in-depth biology, chemistry, and physics itself can go unless you get a PhD in one of these fields. What you learn in undergrad as a prerequisite is exactly what you need to know to do well in med school and become a proper physician.
Third, a real physician is not a "flesh mechanic." You need to have an understanding of how the world really works, which one learns a lot about in undergrad (both in-class and out of class by living on your own for the first time). One needs to have not just book knowledge, but people skills, because being a physician is about treating human beings when they are truly sick and doing what you can to keep them healthy in the face of challenges I shouldn't even begin to enumerate here because it would be out of the scope of answering the OP.
A physician also has an understanding and expertise of things outside of the field of medicine. If all you do is medicine in your life and that's how you define yourself and have nothing else to rely on outside of medicine, you will A) burn yourself out quickly, B) lose what it means to be a human being, and C) not be all you can be. A physician isn't just a "doctor", he/she is a scientist, a scholar, a teacher, a therapist, a mentor, an artist, a professional—a paragon of what humanity can be when one strives to help their fellow humans.
In short, OP, your time in high school and undergrad is invaluable in your quest to become a physician.
