Well put.

Make all clinical rotations optional.

Less than 3% of my class goes into OB/GYN. Yet we all have to suffer through it. Why? To expose us to a field that we have no interest in? 50,000 dollars for a glorified extended career day?

The days of a physician being able to practice all aspects of medicine are long gone. This system is archaic. The quicker we get physicians learning what they need to be learning the more productive they will be in society and the less painful it will be for the students.

Get rid of the first two years.

My classrooms are empty. Everybody just listens to the lectures and reads review books. A good Kaplan course would teach me more than most of my professors and cost way less. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars for this?

Solution:
1.) Accepted to medical school.
2.) One or Two years to study for USMLE.
3.) When you pass the step, you begin your clinical training.

Here is the thing. Hoover didn’t write this blog. I wrote this blog. I want to be a doctor. With all my heart I want to be a doctor. I want to go into primary care. I want to work abroad and in a community hospital here. I want to be a faculty physician because I am devoted to changing medical education before our system falls apart. As some of you may or may not know, we are in a health crisis. Less than 5% of medical students want to go into primary care. Our emergency rooms are full and our bills aren’t being paid. The solution to this, starts in medical education. We need to start focusing on how a medical career can be fulfilling and, yes, tolerable because money doesn’t drive this ship anymore. We need to stop tearing each other apart, focusing on the faults of the new generation and we need to focus on patients. Why? Because if we don’t fix medicine, starting here, we are going to have a country full of sick (poor) people. (Though I do not presume that you care…)

I work hard. I spend long hours at the hospital. I don’t convince myself I should leave for some “new-agey” understanding of mental health. In fact, my evaluations are shining despite my commitment to take care of myself and not kiss ass. I respect the places where I am being taught and am grateful to all hell for the people who take interest in teaching. I ask questions. But I sleep enough to wake up in the morning and feel decently about getting back to the hospital.

Work-a-holic doctors are one thing. I suspect I will be one as soon as I am able. I mean, I want to work with populations who have no one else on their side, so I’d be fooling myself if I didn’t think I would be. I love medicine. This doesn’t bother me. I respect the hell out of someone who loves their job. This is why I am doing this.

Medical school is a different thing all together. To spend hours upon hours of inefficient, ineffective time at the hospital where no one looks in your direction or bothers to answer questions. Unacceptable. The new generation will NOT tolerate mistreatment. It seems this is a lost concept on older generations who just sucked it up and kissed ass to get through the grueling time that is medical school. But there was more to look forward to after they got through it: Good pay, societal respect, practicing evidence-based medicine without always thinking about CYA. Even primary care was a medical profession of dignity, unlike now where the other in the field are disrespectful and half your time is spent dealing with the system.

So yes. Things need to change. Medicine is taking on a new name and medical education needs to change with it. If not for the sake of future physicians, but for the sake of patients and, moreover, for the sake of an unhealthy society.

If you disagree. Wake up. Turn on the news.