Well, actually if you read the Academic Medicine article they do take an eight week principles of organic and physics in medicine course at Mt. Sinai, the summer of their junior year. The course get six units of credit for the organic part and two for the physics. I would love to see the syllabus of the summer course to learn what topics they cover and to what depth.
The authors also write:
Of course the Times article does not mention the summer course or the acknowledgement that these courses have any value. This abridged version of the article will no doubt be used to pressure changes in the programs at undergraduate institutions and at medical schools.We acknowledge that these disciplines have educational value for future physicians and scientists, but we contend that admissions committees pay them too much attention and that far too much time is devoted to them in the undergraduate premed curriculum.
One thing that the articles and their authors don't address is the fate of students who don't get into medical school and took this limited curriculum. One argument for breadth in an undergraduate curriculum is the recognition that those that fail to make it to medical, pharmacy, or dental school should still have skills to earn a living with their degree. I would be very curious to see what happened to those who did not make the grade.
T.S. Hall
A really interesting question is how someone could be a physician and not know organic/biochemistry/physics/biology at an undergraduate level.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem to me to be totally unprofessional to prescribe medicines without the ability to understand the underlying processes, biological and chemical that lead to the medicine's healing properties. Perhaps one could do it, but, it would mean flying blindly when discussing drug interactions and complications....
A physician who did not know/understand chemistry would be incapable of understanding the underlying mechanisms of drug interaction. They could not take part in drug evaluation or compare comparable drugs - imagine not knowing what organic structures mean and being a physician.
I thought pharmacists are what helped doctors understand drugs better. It's impossible for any person to know so much. A surgeon doesn't really have to know everything about the drugs being prescribed, just has to be confident about their usefulness.
ReplyDeleteThough a surgeon who could comprehend organic synthesis would probably be smarter than one who couldn't...