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June 10, 2011 2:57 PM
The High-Speed Medical Degree
Texas is working a new plan to make medical training work a little faster. According to an article in the Austin American-Statesman:
A pilot program scheduled to begin in fall 2013 in San Antonio will allow students to earn a bachelor’s degree and a medical degree in seven years instead of the traditional eight.
The combined degree program is intended to permit biology students at UT-San Antonio to transfer to the UT Health Science Center in that city after three years, provided they score at least 27 on the Medical College Admission Test; 45 is a perfect score. The program has been approved by the Board of Regents and is expected to be approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, said Christi Fish, a spokeswoman for UT-San Antonio.
Because nothing improves medical training like skipping steps and
making people work faster
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lone1c on June 13, 2011 6:44 AM:
This is a very cheap shot here, considering that most medical schools do not require a four-year undergraduate degree program in the sciences before offering admission. At most, there's about two years of college biology, one year each of chemistry and physics, and maybe a few other requirements.
An intensive three-year undergraduate program in medical sciences leading to a four-year medical program might lead to MORE qualified doctors than the ones we're currently graduating.
uber_snotling on June 13, 2011 4:26 PM:
Additionally, most other countries train medical professionals in less than 8 years by not requiring an undergraduate degree. For example, in Ireland, a person enters the medicine program straight away and goes through six years of medicine specific training before entering residency. The first two years might correspond to the intro-level courses one would expect to take to get into medical school.
American universities don't work the same way, but that isn't to say that an undergraduate degree with a bunch of elective classes is really a requirement to be a good diagnostic physician or surgeon.
Texas Aggie on June 16, 2011 6:42 PM:
The real problem with this isn't that the would-be doctors will be undertrained in medicine. As mentioned by the other posters, most medical schools will take students with only two or three years of undergraduate studies as long as they are top notch students as proven by their grades and scores on the MCAT.
What will happen, and I've seen this occur, is that the doctors who come out the other end will have absolutely no knowledge of society and how it works. They will have concentrated solely on their science courses to the neglect of everything else. Their nonmedical training will be the equivalent of a Tea Pottier or a Bircher. And these kids are in TX, for crying out loud. Those people really, really need to experience the world outside of the far rightwing bubble that has descended on the Republic.