The chariot scene in the movie Ben Hur has all the trappings of mindless, driven competition .. just like premed?
As an MD and an intellectual, I find the chariot race of pre med stultifying. Too many premeds, too few slots result in competitors who mindlessly do selfless things … whether that means volunteering in an AIDS clinic or sweating through an organic chemistry class that probably has some pretty slick steel cabinets similar to what you’d find at storemasta that is pretty much irrelevant to today’s practice of medicine.
For most future doctors, college is their last chance to study a field unrelated to science or the business they will be art of. College is more than just pre-professional training and students with the ability to get into medical school should leave college with an education that is worthy of these abilities. What is lost is the opportunity college for a broad eduction, an education that would helop these people be better at all they do …. as well as making them better docs.
Students need to be told that pre med is NOT like some Charlie-the-Tuna prepping to convince the admissions committee that you “taste good.” Second, I worry that the Luddite tendencies of liberals, including our own congressman, Jim McDermott, and conservatives hell bent in cutting waste will make a real education unattainable for most Americans who want to practice medical school.
Charlie is a PreMed, adapted from Star Kist Logo (c) SM Schwartz 2011
.Fortunately, students are often better than the system. The following essay from By Radhika Jain, of the Harvard Crimson may give you a feel of what I believe we should encourage here at the UDub. THE FULL ESSAY CAN BE READ HERE,
“I think there’s a better appreciation of the translation of empirical knowledge, not just from the bench to the bedside, but from the bedside to care delivery to the community,” she says. “A focus on social sciences in the undergrad years can really broaden perspective.”
And while balancing pre-med requirements with a non-science concentration requires students to straddle two very different disciplines, students who have chosen the route say they are excited about the chance to study what they love.
“Being a doctor [is] a career path [where] I think a lot of people want to end up, but you don’t have to take a linear path to get there,” says Maya E. Pena ’12 , a history concentrator.
“[In] Gen Eds and higher level Ec classes on global health and American health care policy, having a background in economics is pretty helpful in being able to understand some of the papers that are very quantitative,” says David Wang ’12, an economics concentrator who is also pursuing a secondary in Global Health and Health Policy.
Wang says he wants to run a hospital one day, and is considering a joint MD/MBA program after college.
Tenley A. Malmquist ’13, a pre-med and joint concentrator in anthropology and Romance Languages and Literature, says she decided not to study neurobiology after a summer trip to Honduras confirmed her passion for archaeology and languages and piqued her interest in a “Doctors Without Borders-kind of career.”
“Being bilingual helps in any profession,” she says.
“One thing historians are really good at is working with uncertainty. We never have information,” says Brett Flehinger, a lecturer in history and resident dean of Lowell House. “You become comfortable with what you don’t know. Doctors work that way a lot of the time.”
Anisha R. Kumar ’12, an anthropology concentrator, has conducted numerous interviews for her thesis, which concerns medical anthropology. She says the notion of “medicine as a social profession” is an important one—and does not necessarily reveal itself through science classes alone.
She adds that her thesis has allowed her to explore “the lived experience of an individual [through] personal contact.”
Ja-Yoon “Uni” Choe ’12, another humanities-studying pre-med, conducts research with the Boston University School of Social Work aimed at improving health service to Asian American women in the Greater Boston Area.
The Women, Gender and Sexuality concentrator took classes at the Harvard School of Public Health last semester and says she found that the intersection of gender and health was rife for exploration, especially in the Asian American community.
The social implications of medicine also appealed to Hillary L. Ditmars ’12, who says that this interest convinced her to begin pre-medical studies in her junior year. Ditmars, a Social Studies concentrator, interned at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland last summer and realized that she wanted to work directly with patients rather than craft health policy.
“It’s really, really important work, but it also made me realize thinking and writing about health in an abstract way wasn’t what I wanted to do,” she says.
Ditmars plans to complete a year of post-baccalaureate studies to finish her pre-med requirements. Nonetheless, she says her background in Social Studies is integral to her interest in becoming a doctor.
“If you’re studying medicine, it’s really important to have an understanding of the way a person’s social and cultural position affect … health,” she says.
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Several students contacted for this article say they have had to sacrifice electives in order to fulfill requirements for both fields.
“That’s probably one of the biggest downsides, not being able to take a random class on acting, or drama,” says Krishna M. Prabhu ’11, who is currently enrolled in organic chemistry while also writing a senior thesis (in sociology).
(Ed. Still, at Harvard as I am sure at the UW, Pre-Meds feel they need to embroider their CVs with science)
“I found when I was applying to work in labs over the summer … it was a little bit difficult to convince them that I was qualified to work in the lab,” says Kumar.
Not taking as many science courses can also impact a student’s ability to find a consistent group of study companions. Wang says he has a “lot of friends through doing problem sets together,” but that it is much more difficult to find people who can share his cross-disciplinary perspective and work demands.
“The pre-meds that are majoring in science together, they have more of a camaraderie,” says Choe. “Being a humanities major, I feel like I need to come up with my own path.”
While Choe says she enjoys the “creative license” this independent path brings, she admits that it can be “kind of stressful.”
Many of these pre-meds say that finding advisers with an interdisciplinary perspective can also be difficult. While several students say they have found support from the Office of Career Services, pre-med tutors in their houses, or professors in their respective departments, they note that not everyone has first-hand experience with melding the two disciplines.
“One thing that I wish we had more was diversity among the pre-med advisers. I haven’t been able to speak a lot to those [who] majored in humanities,” says Choe.
Ultimately, however, many students say that the diversity of their studies actually reinforces their desire to pursue medicine.
“Because I was in a situation where people around me were looking at other concentrations, I questioned whether I really wanted to do medicine,” says Kumar.
“I definitely think concentrating in a non-science while being pre-med is one of the best decisions I made at Harvard.”
I would like to echo Steve’s sentiments; a “liberal arts” background is superb preparation for a medical education, of any type. I’ve been teaching medical students for 40 years, and siome of the best students we’ve had at the University of Washington have had definitely non-scientific backgrounds – from ballet dancers to mountain guides. If anything, in my experience, the scientific pre-requisites for med school are excessive, either extraneous, tedious, or will be mostly repeated in med school.
Let me put it in a bit of context: our medical students are extra-ordinary, both as human beings as a future applied scientists and humanists (which is what good doctors are). Some of them have stupendous science backgrounds, get PhD’s, and then become family doctors!(my discipline). And some start out in sociology, catalyze a new med student group serving the homeless, and end up as research pathologists. So preparation is not destiny. But all things considered, I would argue strongly for a diverse background before even considering medicine, including a stretch of time doing something creative, meaningful, and humanitarian after college and before applying to med school.
While I agree that a liberal pre-med education is especially essential for health professionals, I also feel that it is essential for any professional. Although I was a science major, and went to graduate school to become a mathematician, I consider the humanities courses I took to be among the most valuable. I can cite especially the courses I took in the history of Europe. I have always felt I understand the Western world and what drives people and events to a degree I could never have achieved without this kind of education. It also helps me in my relations with people when I attend conferences, which involve people from other countries.
As we grow, our intellectual tool sets tools develop from divers sources. Native gifts are important, but our usage of those gifts depends on the a full set of diverse learning experience. Those experiences are3 unique to each intellect. I think is incredibly arrogant to imagine that the humanities and social sciences are not a central part of that exercise.
What disturbs me is that folks who call themselves “educators” really believe that it is their job to teach. They keep saying we need to define our curriculum. Why? Isn’t it lour job to to provide tools to learn with? I am simply not arrogant enough to presume that I know the best tools for every student.
One of the worst examples of this educator arrogance is the concept of a defined, mastery curriculum. Students are taught that there are real limits to what they need to learn. To stay withing those limits, faculty are supposed to limit exam questions to what is taught. My own education followed a very different pattern. Some years ago I was in a medical school pathology class. The teacher, Stanley Robbins, was the author of the pathology text we still use today. Near the middle of our first semester, several of my classmates asked Dr. Robbins what was going to be on our exam? They wanted to know whether the test would be based on the lectures, on the textbook, or on the labs. Stanley Robbins answer? “The subject!”
I take that lesson very seriously. If I fail to “teach” my students, it is still their job to learn the subject. Struggling through the Iliad may be as important to that skill as learning the structure of the periodic table.
It is impossible to disagree with the above comments re: the need for diversity in one’s education. But I think it is more than that. Students are often amazed at how I can interact with a homeless patient, then a Microsoft executive, and then a bus driver-and yet I can (I am told) work with them in their healthcare all the same. Why? Certainly, having other interests outside of medicine is part of the answer, and having formal education in the arts, history, and English is also helpful. But it is more than that! Seeing a teenager not wishing to take care of his diabetes (my specialty) but spending most of the visit talking about baseball, and using that discussion to move into improving their healthcare. Or talking to the stressed out mother of 3 who is trying to balance her job and her family, and in the struggle ignoring her own health. Understanding her culture and her anxiety is what can make the difference as a physician. The role of a more broad education is an important part of being a “complete” physician, and I totally agree with Steve’s comments. But it is even more than that, which is why I encourage students to get as many different experience with as many different people and cultures as possible.
Tx Irl.
What worries me is that a combination of superficial people on the right and the left .. combining a need to save dollars with a lack of respect for education will dump the best parts of our system.