PRI: Public Radio International

NYU and other universities looking to shorten medical school to three years

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 08:00:00 -0600

The process of becoming a doctor typically takes four or more years for students to complete. But now some universities are looking into shortening the process by one year -- in part to minimize the burden of student debt.

Benedictus

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:08:56 -0600

They tried this during WW II and during Vietnam and went back to four years soon after. What did they learn from the 1970's experience? I recall Einstein and NY Med Coll tried it then. The major difference was that they shaved very little off of the first 2 years. Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Jayzee

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:29:26 -0600

"A medical student would be less likely to pick the high priced-specialties like heart surgery or neurosurgery to pay off their debt, Caplan says"
Ummm...this guy obviously is not familiar with what's currently going on with medical students. No person in their right mind goes into Neurosurgery or Heart Surgery for the lifestyle. A bit of a tip off that he's clueless.

And shortening medical school to lower total student debt? Are you kidding me? You need every single one of those years and then some to be a doctor. In fact, given the new stricter work hour regulations, some specialties are thinking of adding to residency time. But they want to cut a year off the prepwork? What is that saying about an ounce something being worth a pound of something else?

If this somehow catches on, I pity the next generation of doctors; woefully unprepared for what they are expected to do. Even being a younger doctor, I've seen many of the gray-hairs complain that our training is not rigorous enough and that new doctors simply have not had enough experience to practice well independently.

Maybe instead of cutting training to reduce student debt, they should be figuring out why the heck they are charging so much for medical school!!
The rest of the first world manages to pay for most medical schooling so medical students can actually choose the specialty they love rather than the one that will allow them to pay their student loans!

Common

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 15:53:15 -0600

I believe it was Abraham Flexner who visited Europe and recommended the European model to the USA.

PreMed Roadmap

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:09:49 -0600

We have several questions about this new curriculum. How do you expect students to do on USMLE Step 1 now that you are limiting their time in the basic sciences? How do you plan to manage student stress levels and burnout now that students will start early and take fewer breaks? How do you plan to reduce tuition if students will be starting earlier and going through summer?

Third Year Med Student

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 19:09:32 -0600

I think this is a wonderful idea. Much of the information within the first two years of medical school could be left out - there are so many basic science details included at the moment that it's hard to learn the important, big picture messages in courses like immunology or genetics. I found that I was losing the forest for the trees, even though I was a biology major in my undergraduate studies! The problem is that medical schools primarily have each lecturer just give 1-2 lectures on a topic, instead of having 1 lecturer giving many lectures as in an undergraduate course. As you might imagine, lectures are disjointed and vary highly in quality and clarity. I think that at least 6 months could be cut out, if not an entire year.

Resident

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 00:21:24 -0600

The insertion that medical students choose heart surgery/neurosurgery and other surgical specialties because of tuition costs is inane, oft-repeated drivel. Med students choose those specialties because in our system you earn more money and are accorded more respect if you specialize, ideally in something surgical, otherwise in something procedural based. American medicine is very hierarchical, largely as a consequence of the reimbursement decisions of medicare/aid. The idea that med students can be nudged into picking a specialty against the grain of their own welfare on the basis of encouragement, decreased debt, whoop-de-doo fundamentally misunderestimates the human impulse to respond to pragmatic incentives (in short, less work, more bling>>anything med school administrators can come up with to incentivize ppl going into primary care).

Joel

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 19:01:11 -0600

It would be great to have transcripts for the wonderful stories that you broadcast. I have a little hearing impairment that does not let me hear the whole audio stories.

Thank you so much