Med Schools: Four That Flunk

Hartford Courant ^ | 6-29-03 | By JACK DOLAN And ANDREW JULIEN, Courant Staff Writers

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I am a graduate of the combined program between Penn State and Jefferson Medical College in Phila. The program- at my time, 5 years in length, more recently 6 - is extremely difficult to get into: minimum 1400 SATs, exhaustive interviews, psychological profiling, etc. Program worked by taking the typical "science" courses in the 1st 2 years of med school (eg, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, etc) and applying credits to both undergrad and med school programs. With this, we still had to go to 6 quarters of undergrad. Most of us also had significant Advanced Placement credits coming out of high school. Furthermore, in spite of the rigorous entrance criteria, nearly 25% of those who started the program did not finish it (finding the continuous, year-round grind to be too much).
In no way did the Penn State-Jefferson program resemble the curricula at the "Guad". In fact, the goal of the Penn State-Jefferson program was to attract students to both institutions who might otherwise find themselves at Ivy League schools for undergraduate and similar "star" quality medical schools. Additionally, there have been and continue to be several other colleges and medical schools around the country that have similar, high quality "combined" programs.

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Common misconception regarding the AMA. It has no "qualifying" or "disqualifying" powers regarding physicians. It is only a physicians' professional society/advocacy group and has no legal authority to empower physicians to practice or to take that power away. The AMA does, however, take public positions on a wide variety of ethical and practice-related issues; many of these become adopted by governmental and other regulatory agencies that do have legal power over physicians' abilities to practice medicine in this country. I'm no big fan of the AMA, but it doesn't deserve blame for incompentent docs. State medical boards, on the other hand, are the prime legal authorities regulating physicians' practices. They have a thankless task, being buffetted by extremely powerful, but often competing, legal and political forces. One of the problems of VA medicine is that, at least until recently, "federal" physicians were not under the jurisdiction of state medical boards.

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Interesting. Thank you.

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Would these drs on the state med. boards belong to the AMA, by any chance? I don't know how thankless their job is. Is there ever a shortage of people who want to do that job? If not, they must get SOMETHING out of it. And if the AMA took a public position on the unethical practice of the disgustingly long time it took state boards to take licenses away from incompetent drs across the country, would that have any affect on the state boards?
Btw - didn't know about the VA docs.

[JusPasenThru]

Folks, get used to this.

Back in the sixties and seventies, a career in medicine was very appealling. It allowed our altruistic motives to flourish, and it certainly allowed its practitioners to earn a good living. Now physicians represent a summer home or new Mercedes for trial lawyers, and there's very little we can do about it. Good young students are sometimes attracted to medicine, but the bulk of them are heading for careers in law because they can earn bigger bucks in a shorter period of time, especially if they get involved in mass torts. In order to take up the manpower slack, more and more physicians of dubious educational or cultural backgrounds are playing a more and more important role in American medicine. This, combined with the death of the Hippocratic oath, which specifically condemns abortion and physician-assisted suicide, means that all you aging baby boomers are going to be in a heap of trouble when you turn 65 and try to find a good doctor who accepts new Medicare patients.

I don't know a single doc over 50 who wouldn't retire in a heartbeat if they could afford it. If the stock market ever rebounds, a lot of patients are going to see their docs vanish. A big chunk of them will also be forced out of business because they can't get or can't afford malpractice insurance. Hell, the longer a doc is in practice, the more time he has to get sued, and the more likely he is to lose his malpractice insurance. I couldn't design a system better to get rid of experienced docs and replace them with a bunch of losers.

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"In order to take up the manpower slack,"

See, this is the part I don't get. If there IS a slack, why are the medical schools still making it so hard for students to get in? I haven't heard of a shortage of students in medical schools, and I haven't heard that they're easy to get into. So where's the slack?

[JusPasenThru]

The U.S. population is aging, so the demand for docs is steadily going up. There is also a heightened demand for our services, both because of the emphasis on preventative care and increased expectations of the population. Also, the physician workforce is going from 95% male to about 55% female. Women physicians are interested in a more balanced life for the most part than their workaholic male counterparts, so they are less productive. Most American medical schools are not willing to lower their academic requirements, unlike those of most of the rest of the world. Hence, relatively fewer highly qualified medical trainees from American schools. Where do think the rest will come from?

BTW, I'm told by someone who trained a year in Paris that the way they keep their doctor fees low there is that they allow virtually anyone who wants to go to medical school to do so. The market is flooded by physicians who must rachet down their fees accordingly. There are some outstanding docs in France, and a whole lot of bad ones. But at least they are reasonably priced.

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. "Most American medical schools are not willing to lower their academic requirements"

Their requirements seeem so high, that lowering them a little wouldn't be pproblem. In fact, it woould help weed out the lesser educated foreign docs coming into the country. Which do you think most people here would rather see? A student who got into Penn St. with a 3.5, or a guy with a degree from the Phillipines?

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Sorry, but it seems to me the French schools went too far, and the American med schools aren't doing enough. The U.S. schools seem to be making the problem worse. It seems they'll have to lower their admissions requirements eventually, and the time is now, since the baby boomers(and I am one) will all need care shortly.

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