Comments on: Should the best and brightest really become doctors?

By: DocZhivago

DocZhivago — Sun, 10 May 2009 07:12:00 +0000

Agree.. The Ego amongst Docs.

Well My Ego all gone,
after I failed my Final Med Exam.
The only exam I ever failed, making me a remedial.
This made me much more humble.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 09 May 2009 14:08:00 +0000

I think she’s setting up a false dichotomy. Sure, the ability to work with others should be looked at (and is). However, there are many intelligent applicants who can both score well on the MCAT and work well with others.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:37:00 +0000

Its not should always be like that , in my view. Rather , the sentence could be fliped ,as ,
“doctor must always be best and bright”. Because any negligence is not bearable on account of him.

By: William

William — Sat, 09 May 2009 04:39:00 +0000

As a med student, I’ll admit sometimes I get concerned as to where some of my classmates will end up. The selection process does a good job getting driven students that score well on tests. But intellegence is only one aspect of the job. There are other characteristics that i find important -compassion, empathy, dedication, ethics, the ability to work in groups, etc.- those factors vary widely from student to student and from doctor to doctor.
I wish there was a higher standard in med school for these more humanitarian traits. But that will probably never happen because essentially current doctors choose future med students. People have the tendancy to select people similar to themselves. Since all doctors are smart- they will choose smart med students. But not all doctors are compassionate, ethical, dedicated, so in that reguard- the medical school selection process lags. It’s a shame.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:40:00 +0000

I love these hypocrites and their recommendations about what they think is best for medical practice. It never fails that whenever one of these high-profile wonks gets sick, especially with something serious, they are on the plane to JFK or LGA to see someone at one of the medical Meccas. They aren’t looking for group-thinkers or passive easygoing personalities then. Same for presidents, congressmen and anyone else who gets things they want when things get scary–it’s off to see the Wizard.

This is a solution fit for the little people, at least for those who think of persons unlike themselves as the little people.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:28:00 +0000

Given so many UMCs (upper-middle-class) kids with BMWs who don't have to work so as to focus on the MCAT --

isn't this game, really "teaching to the test?"

Of course. A silly game. That the public pays for.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:46:00 +0000

LEFT OUT

The writer, PhD in English (1), has as usual missed large parts of the target. As noted in a JAMA op-ed, when the majority of medical students come from the top tiers of family SES -- something is desparately wrong.

Like the middle-class being left out. Like rural whites being left out.

Not leadership, per se. Social class.

(1) MAHAR, M.A. (1975). THE SHAPE OF A HISTORY: ELIOT, HARDY, AND LAWRENCE. Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, United States -- Connecticut.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 07 May 2009 04:04:00 +0000

Wow, I'm kind of surprised by the comments posted here. In my mind, the National Symposium on Medical and Health Care Education Reform (which Mahar was really just reporting on) hit the nail square on the head.

Doctors do not need to be any smarter than some threshold IQ and the best are rarely the brightest. Especially now, with the availability of information and diagnostic aids (which are ONLY going to become more important), you don't need the traditional medical school skill set to be successful. Now, first year residents can out-diagnose and out-manage staff because of the knowledge in their extended brains (read: PDAs, rapidly searchable internet).

I think an interesting comparison is with engineering programs. Engineering students aren't expected to do their thermodynamics exams without calculators or tables of constants and relevant formulas. When are medical schools going to start allowing students to write exams with PDAs and assistive software?

In my experience, doctors are disproportionately close-minded and short-sighted. Medicine as the old guard practiced it is dying.

By: Xerxes1729

Xerxes1729 — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:21:00 +0000

When I was applying to medical school, an interviewer told me that he thought medical schools were taking too many smart people. His concern was that smart people got bored with medicine and ended up hating their jobs. I’m fairly sure it was a closed-file interview, so he didn’t know about my excellent MCAT score and grades. I was not accepted at that school.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:41:00 +0000

A lot of hooey is flying about here. I am one of the grey beard who went to school in the "old days". The admissions people said extracurriculars were necessary, so the motivated individualists provided them. In practice they went for grades and MCAT scores. In any case, we were "the best and brightest" with most GPA's 3.8 or above and MCAT well above average of admitted student nationally. We were a lot of opinionated hard-headed individualist who upon being herded into our first year classes together, fought like cats and dogs. But we quickly began working together setting up systems to beat the system. Because we had too.

By third year clinicals, we were mostly adept at self-organizing to get the work done--we had to be. We conspired to herd the 10% who were too neurotic to do that into the same group together so the rest of us wouldn't be pulled under by them.

Intelligient individualists will cooperate and work well in groups when it is conducive to fullfilling the goals that they have chosen as individuals. What they will not do is let others define their goals, values and standards. The latter I think, is what the policy wonks desire.

It is not possible in most clinical settings to be a dedicated doctor who puts the patients interest first and not sometimes but heads with the obstructionists, fools, incompetents, and crooks that one sometimes find in every organization. If everyone thinks you are an a-hole, you are. But if no one thinks you are an a-hole, then you aren't doing your job.