Three-Year Med Schools Are Coming

Much of medical education is careening into an ideological ditch. Following the directives of the “health equity” movement, med schools have veered off the course of teaching future doctors the basics of anatomy and various medical procedures to instead discuss how systemic racism causes back pain or how doctors can raise their own “critical consciousness.”

That being said, there are a few medical schools, such as NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine, that are heading in a new, surprisingly promising direction: They’ve crammed the traditional four-year course of study into three years, trimming the electives and carrying classes through the summer. This simple innovation in medical education is not only successful in itself but points to a better approach to higher learning more generally.

Superficially, such a change reeks of lowered standards. K-12 schools have gutted their curricula of any rigor and pass all students along, a trend that has led to a higher number of remedial courses becoming necessary at the collegiate level. Perhaps such mediocrity has finally reached medical schools, forcing them to ease up on their stereotypically unforgiving curricular demands?

Quite the contrary. A 2022 study comparing three-year medical schools to their traditional counterparts found that accelerated students entered their training with comparable admissions standards, achieved similar scores on medical examinations, and performed as well in their first year of residency. A follow-up comparative study from 2024 confirmed these results: There’s no marked difference in achievement between students who attend three- versus four-year medical schools.

There’s a famous thought experiment called “Chesterton’s Fence” that can help to frame this discussion. In it, G.K. Chesterton suggests that the purchaser of a new property should not tear down any fence until he knows the reason the fence was first erected.

WIKI

In the United Kingdom students generally begin medical school after secondary education. This contrasts with the US and Canadian (outside Quebec) systems, where a bachelor’s degree is required for entry to medical school. Entry to British medical schools is very competitive.

All leading British medical schools are state-funded and their core purpose is to train doctors on behalf of the National Health Service. Courses generally last four to six years: two years of pre-clinical training in an academic environment and two to three years clinical training at a teaching hospital and in community settings.

Lecture-based learning (LBL) consists of information delivered mainly through large lectures or seminars. This had been the predominant method of delivering pre-clinical medical education at many UK medical schools prior to the introduction of Tomorrow’s Doctors. Teaching is delivered via large teaching events at which several hundred students may be present, which guides learning. Students are encouraged to do their own reading between lectures as the lectures will only cover the main points.

Key points in support of LBL include that students gain the opportunity to listen to leading clinicians or academics...

In the UK, the focus is [now] on a [often more costly][problem-based learning] PBL-tutorial which is conducted in small groups of around 8–10 students (although this varies with seniority and between medical school) with a tutor (or facilitator) who usually comes from either a clinical or academic background, depending on the level of the course.

Academics at Maastricht University developed seven steps of what should happen in the PBL process:

The group read the scenario and clarify terms they do not understand

They define what the problem is

They brainstorm possible hypotheses or explanations

Come up with a possible solution

Define a series of learning objectives they should achieve by the next tutorial, arising out of the problem

Gather information to fulfil the learning objectives - this can be in the form of private study or reading; attending a lecture; having a discussion or teaching session with a relevant “expert”; attend a ward round or clinic; interview a relevant patient

At the next tutorial, students share the information they have gathered since the last tutorial, and discuss areas where information they have gained conflicts - this may lead to further learning objectives if they find they are still not clear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_school_in_the_United_Kingdom

The profession of “doctor” is changing anyway. Doctors and US medicine have become hyper-specialized.

Expertise more-and-more lies with the device and pharmaceutical makers, and doctors are just “distributors.” So It’s not necessarily a bad thing, although I am sure government and leftists will abuse it in multiple ways. Certainly holistic medicine is nearly dead-and-gone in the US medical profession.

A friend is an orthopedic surgeon. All he does is hip replacements and its all he ever will do until he retires. Has done thousands of these operations. He’s trained up on the newest machinery from the corporate supplier, who brings him to nice conferences regularly for training and updates on their equipment.

If you ask him about the Covid Vax, he’ll just repeat whatever he recently read in The NY Times or Time magazine. Not a clue.

Everyone complains about the cost of their doctor's visits while never giving a thought about what a total brake job on their SUV will cost them.....

People better be careful what they wish for.

Anyone here willing to offer themselves up to heart or lung surgery to a Doctor trained in General Surgery? Which is basically what you have in Canada....

As a side note, my nephew is now a Thoracic surgeon for a major hospital group here in S.E. Michigan.

Here are his credentials:

4 years college at Williams College in Boston. Cost: $74,000 per year.

4 years medical school at University of Michigan. (cost unknown)

5 years general surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.

2 years Harvard Fellowship in Thoracic surgery at Mass General Hospital.....

You want the govt. to step in and grant 3 year degrees in medicine? LOL! I'll leave my medical problems to the local gas station mechanic, at least I'll get a free oil change out of it........

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