Should affirmative action be more of a priority in medical schools?
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It is probably fair to remember that the biggest determinant of where someone practices is where someone is from in the first place. If you want rural practitioners, you select people from rural areas in the first place.
My state medical school realized a couple years ago, that their population of in-state students was approaching 50%. The newspaper profiled the medical students. Great stories of fantastic students. Thing was, they all had plans to return to their native Houston or Los Angeles….suburbs….to be dermatologists and plastic surgeons. Their words.
Then the newspaper wrote…..with no sense of irony…..about how hard it was to find students willing to practice in our state’s large rural areas.
LOL!
Training the best and brightest? Stick a fork in that pabulum with this political correctness nonsense being foisted into the admissions process.
No.
Just pick the best (while they can be recruited).
Yeah! Skin color man. That’s the main thing. Ability smility.
In the large city where I live the dominant race in medical training is Asian, so I guess affirmative action would include blacks, whites, and hispanics. Most females either quit practice early in their careers or practice part time, so this is really not addressable at the training level. By the way, very few people raised in a rural environment want to return there; most want to practice in New York City.
“In the large city where I live the dominant race in medical training is Asian, so I guess affirmative action would include blacks, whites, and hispanics.”
It varies from state to state, but in Calif public universities in the 80’s to 90’s, affirmative action included Hispanics, Blacks and every under-represented subgroup of Asians (ie, Filipinos, Vietnamese) even though Asians as a whole were over-represented
california public universities actually UNDER-enrolled asians based on academic performace – how many underachieving asian students have you heard of???
Not a single black or hispanic medical student I knew wound up practicing in an underserved area- and they clearly had a drastically different admissions standard to med school.
Meanwhile people bitch about foreigners from India and the middle east, though these hardworking folks are the ones largely serving our inner cities (not to mention they’re MUCH more acadmically qualified than the affirmative action beneficiary).
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116321461412620634.html
In my city, the black physicians practice in the affluent parts of town pursuing pleasant paying patients like everyone else. I, like most physicians from rural backgrounds, avoid practicing their because it just isn’t as good a life. I didn’t have to stay in school for 12 years after my farm peers to stay on the farm. Why do they think I did all this? I am sure that people from ghettos feel the same way.
BTW, the black physicians that I know aren’t from the ghetto anyway, they grew up upper middle class at least.
Hey Anonymous 7:34am, you obviously do not know many black physicians. Every black doctor I know has worked in an underserved area, including myself. In fact, most of my career has been working for underserved folks. If they (black doctors) don’t work in an undersered area, most will see medicaid patients, whether they bill for it or not.
And watch it….Your hate is showing. There are many studies that show that black and hispanic physicians go into underserved areas and serve the poor more than any other physicans. But I guess you just needed a reason/excuse to spew your hatred. I feel great concern for any patient/person of color who comes in contact with you. There is a reason why many patients of color would rather have someone who looks like them. You never know what that physician really thinks about you (well with you we know) and you never know if you will get the best treatment. Physicians will never be able to come together for their causes due to the arogant, sometimes hidden (other times overt) bigotry, and entitlement issues. I have more than earned my credentials and work very hard. It doesn’t matter what medical system comes to pass, I will be okay because I went into medicine to serve, not to support an over-inflated ego and to feel superior to others. Too bad you can’t express your views in person, but then again, closet bigots are typically cowards. It is much better to rant on a blog where you are nice and safe. I am happy with my life, what about you?I am done with this discussion, as I do not suffer fools well.
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