On the other hand, a fast-learning student could put in 3 years and cover the same amount of material. Why keep those students from being doctors for a whole year?
The good news is that this system already exists. It's called competency-based education. The idea is that students focus on mastering a set of skills rather than completing course work over a pre-determined period of time. Basically, it's like the OSCE - there'd be a list of tasks you need to complete, except you could take the OSCE whenever you felt ready. Only takes you two weeks instead of four to get through UG block? Well now you wouldn't have to spend a week rererereading the syllabus, instead you could take the exam early and move on. Want to take 8 weeks instead of 5 to get through neuro? It'd be a more personally tailored style of med school.
I'm sure you can see the potential here.
What if there was a mega lists of 100 clinical procedures we had to learn during M3. We had to spend time in the sim center, watching youtube videos, practice on each other, to master the procedures. Then we'd get tested whenever we felt ready. Less time being wasted randomly walking around the wards figuring out what to do next. SO efficient.
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| What if M1/2 were like the OSCE? |
You'd pick up the syllabus - then take the test whenever you felt ready. If you pass, you'd move on to the next syllabus. If you don't, you'd try again later.
This system would eliminate grades as an arena for competition among students and produce happier doctors. As well as provide flexibility for students with non-syllabus interests. Tuition is still paid per time so it would incentivize graduating earlier, and working harder, which would prevent students from getting too lazy.
See you on the other side,
from ken
enjoy sidenote in 140 characters or less @kensidenotelife.
Good points. Efficiency definitely a good thing, gotta keep the engine running at full steam ahead. Certainly can be frustrating for students who have a quicker learning capacity or even a higher level of knowledge then the other students to be in system that doesn't fit their pace. This can lead to students becoming lazy and not being pushed to challenge themselves to a limit. I like the idea of creating a dynamic system that creates an ability for each student to be challenged to their capacity, not to the seemingly contrived average learning capacity. Let the people that need more time to learn get it, but at the same time don't slow down the faster ones.
ReplyDeleteBut one consideration to factor in to the whole time factor of higher education (not just medical school or even graduate school, but college/university education), is it delays people from entering the so called "real world", ie the working force. If you create a system that is super efficient and people are graduating at such a high rate, it would flood the job market and those people that sped through school to get into the work force wouldn't find the work available for them. So then instead of people sitting around frustrated that the school is going to slow for them, you'd get people sitting around not working and worse yet not in an environment that harbors their skills. Therefore, the argument could be made not speed up school, but to lengthen it to allow for the work force time to supply jobs. Doctor's are kinda different though, always a high demand position.
Good point. There's actually a problem where this year is the first time that there are more first year doctor jobs than American med school graduates. Not sure exactly what happens to those graduates without jobs.. I guess the response would be to lower the # of med students?
DeleteI think it is now and has been for a couple of years, a situation where people who might not of considered going to med school or graduate school decided go because they couldn't get a job out of college. So instead of an influx of workers with bachelors degrees, you have a lag period and then get an influx of people with MD and MS and PHDs. The holding ground is working, but the jobs still aren't there. Problem has just been compounding for a couple of years now, that lag period is upon us now. I think we are going to see this situation, where there aren't enough jobs to go around, get worse and worse over the years. Pretty complicated problem, whats gonna be the solution?
DeleteThis is veering in a direction of policy, which I know zero about.. So I'll go ahead and throw out my half-baked thoughts. Less spots in MD and PhD programs. I'll only speak to those because that's what I know about. I've felt this for a long time.
DeleteThere are MANY weak PhD candidates in biomedical research fields. In my opinion, PhD's should be reserved for the future heads of labs. Instead, PhD's are trained to do lab work, which I could do just as competently as a BA-trained 21 year old. There are not enough jobs for PhD's to all be heads of labs, and as a result there are tons of PhD's that have been working in labs slaving away for twenty years. The argument here could be that it shouldn't matter how many PhD's are produced, the best should rise to the top, and they will run the labs.
Unforunately, that's not always how it works, and the more PhD's are floating around the more the pool gets diluted. The more people have to screen by on-paper qualifications like test scores and grades, the more unqualified people with good resume's are going to get through the system.
So, all that to say. We should make graduate school more competitive by cutting the number of spots by 1/2, and additionally the stipend for those students should go up by x2. This would make the spots much more competitive, and hypothetically we would get better candidates. This would save people with the advanced degrees from wasting their time in the job market, and it would save people who didn't make the cut because they could instead invest the 4+ years it can take to get an advanced degree and develop actual job relevant skills.
This deserves a post. I need to think about this more. Looking forward to your reply.
I agree, to make schools more competitive reducing the spots would help. Getting a higher level degree should be something that you want to pursue, not just something to do because you don't have another option. The job market does suck, but the graduate schools shouldn't be the place that absorbs all the people that just want to fall back into something they are comfortable with, academics.
DeleteI think another issue with schooling in general is that has become too formulaic. Instead of producing people with actual refined talent and knowledge, you get regurgitative learners that can just play the game really well. School in general has to step up its game to produce whats its actually intended for, producing true independent thinkers.