Why must medical school students take labs?

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jjoeirv

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Why must medical school students take labs? They want to become doctors, not lab technicians. How many hours a week do medical school students typically spend in labs? I hated my undergrad labs, but I felt fine about my undergrad lectures. Studying is easy for me, but lab work is not something I am comfortable with.
 
How else are you going to learn anatomy, hist/path, etc. So far about 4 hrs/week, but we haven't started our true anatomy block yet.
 
A doctor is a scientist at heart.
 
Originally posted by uclacrewdude
A doctor is a scientist at heart.

It's too bad that most doctors don't live up to that expectation.

As for why the labs are important, I believe a lot of it has to do with how learning "hands-on" helps in getting that information to stick.
 
Originally posted by uclacrewdude
A doctor is a scientist at heart.

Yet medical school is very poor training to be a scientist.
 
Originally posted by MacGyver
Yet medical school is very poor training to be a scientist.

Are you in medical school?
 
Labs are invaluable to the training of physicians. There is no way one can learn anatomy by looking at Netters and reading a text. The same is true for various other labs, that offer important hands-on experience. Yes, it is true that you won't be a lab technician. But, how do you expect to know what tests to order and what the results are supposed to mean if you are not intimately familiar with them?
Get used to it....fast.
 
Originally posted by souljah1
Are you in medical school?
From reading Macs post I think he is mstp.
 
Yes I'm in med school and you know what I say is true.

Med school is not about training you to think like a scientist, its about cramming waves of information at you and memorizing stuff.

"Labs" in med school are not really labs in the scientific sense, they are just hands on sessions. The labs you see in med school are not about doing experiments, so the scientific value of them is poor. There are some exceptions, but these "experiments" are hardly more than the adhoc cookbook type in which no thinking is required and you just follow a set protocol thats been determined in advance.

Thats why the MD is not an academic degree, its a professional degree like the JD. Its not about creating new knowledge (although many MDs manage to do that) its about getting you familiar with a core set of knowledge that you need to practice a profession. Theres a distinct difference between a PhD and an MD degree. They are apples and oranges.
 
Originally posted by jjoeirv
Why must medical school students take labs?

As a future pathologist, I have to say is ????????.
 
Originally posted by MacGyver
Yes I'm in med school and you know what I say is true.

Med school is not about training you to think like a scientist, its about cramming waves of information at you and memorizing stuff.

"Labs" in med school are not really labs in the scientific sense, they are just hands on sessions. The labs you see in med school are not about doing experiments, so the scientific value of them is poor. There are some exceptions, but these "experiments" are hardly more than the adhoc cookbook type in which no thinking is required and you just follow a set protocol thats been determined in advance.

Thats why the MD is not an academic degree, its a professional degree like the JD. Its not about creating new knowledge (although many MDs manage to do that) its about getting you familiar with a core set of knowledge that you need to practice a profession. Theres a distinct difference between a PhD and an MD degree. They are apples and oranges.

Strictly going by the book, right, you won't actually discover that AIDS is caused by HIV doing clinical medicine. But you may be the one to recognize a novel trend of symptoms in patients and stuff.
 
Mac,

I would just like to remind you that one can be a scientist without stepping foot in a laboratory. Clinical research can be done at the bedside. I agree that PhD's and MD's are apple and orange degrees, and that it would be foolish for MD students to spend days in the lab mastering pipetting sp?

For all those intersted, there is a great article in this week's NEJM on translating research into patient care. Some great points are mentioned.
 
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