This is going to be more of a rant than an informational piece. I think this is on my mind because this past week was "Match Day" - the day when fourth-year medical students across the country find out where they will be going for the next part of their training, the "residency." Looking back at the process of getting to this day, and my experiences over the past year, I have to conclude that it is time for a change: Our undergraduate requirements for medical school applicants are in desperate need of reworking.
I grew up in Texas and went to school at Texas A&M University. During my second year, I decided that I was going to give medical school a try, and so I started down that long, painful road of "pre-med requirements." The first big hurdle to jump was general chemistry, two semesters worth. At my school, there were tons of engineering and science majors, so these were large sections (upwards of 300 people), and as you can imagine, the tests were "memorize and recall." After this came two semesters of general biology, physics, organic chemistry (oh God, the pain!) and biochemistry. Throw in a few random science electives and I was ready to apply (and take the MCAT). Unfortunately, I was not ready for medical school.
I took my seat that first day at Baylor College of Medicine ready to learn, ready to build on that great foundation of basic science knowledge. But I immediately realized that the science classes I had taken were just a cloaked set of hoops everyone who gets admitted to medical school has to go through.
Organic chemistry did nothing for me as I tried to grasp various disease states. Physics and chemistry, at least in the form that I learned it (balancing equations and solving word problems involving electrical resistance), also provided little help. I have to confess that biology was useful in that I knew about cells, evolutionary theory and basic anatomy/physiology, and my courses in biochemistry introduced me to some core concepts that were used in medical school. However, I suspect the applicable aspects of those courses could have been summed up in a single semester and in a single course.
Mind you, I'm not complaining that my university did not adequately educate me in these subjects, and that medical school was so far advanced that I could not keep up. The truth is quite the opposite; those two semesters of organic taught me about 98 percent more than I need to know to become a good physician. Instead, I am complaining that the pre-med education required the wrong subjects to prepare me for medical school and for becoming a doctor.
A common response is that the general science education helps one to learn to think like a scientist, to learn the language that other learned women and men use in medicine. There is a morsel of truth to this, but isn't this curriculum a little bit of overkill? Come on, it's like making a guy take two semesters of horticulture before you let him mow your lawn.
During this past year, I had the chance to break free from the usual medical education and take several courses from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. What a life change! I have been able to learn about Islam, Christianity and Judaism as well as Rawls' justice theories, Nussbaum's feminist critiques and Pogge's writings on world poverty. I am learning about history, religion and politics --- the very things that affect people and their decisions on a daily basis. This is what I needed to prepare me to become a good physician, not a thorough (or even basic) understanding of organic chemistry.
As the medical field struggles to reconnect with patients during this era of increasing blood work and medical imaging, perhaps we should look again at what is shaping the minds of our future physicians. If we are letting people think that preparing for medical school means memorizing, and then forgetting, a bunch of information relating to physics, chemistry and biology, we are on the wrong track. An ability to master those subjects means little. The good physicians, the ones we want to tell our secrets to, will be well-versed in the humanities. They will be the ones we trust when we walk through difficult times, and these are the types of physicians that we should strive to nurture through our educational requirements.
Patrick Jones is a biweekly columnist. He can be reached at pjones@cavalierdaily.com
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