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The AMA backs the residency requirement. In my opinion it potentially gives doctors bad habits: Tolerating a miserable sleep schedule, placing too much value on
by benjohnson 7y ago
The AMA backs the residency requirement. In my opinion it potentially gives doctors bad habits: Tolerating a miserable sleep schedule, placing too much value on quick diagnosis, equating long hours with effectiveness, and perhaps not placing enough value on teamwork with nurses.
- jac241 7y agoSo once you graduate medical school, physicians should be able to practice without further specialty training? A first day MD should be able to manage patients on vents in the ICU, do crainotomies, and interventional or surgical heart valve replacements? Do you think 6+ years to train internal medicine specialists, surgeons, and radiologists is unnecessary?
- toasterlovin 7y agoYou're arguing against something the parent didn't say. They argued for removing the residency requirement. They didn't say there should be zero post-school training.
- gamblor956 7y agoThat is exactly what a residency is...
- bigwavedave 7y agoConsidering residency is the post-educational training you're referring to, I think the argument is relevant and valid.
- jdminhbg 7y agoIt's not that hard to imagine a postgraduate training system for doctors that isn't the US residency program. The original poster did, in fact, present a false dilemma: that if you think the current system is bad, then you must oppose all postgraduate training.
- jac241 7y agoFair assessment. Any thoughts to what could work as an alternative? For it flaws, overwork being the main one, I think other parts of residency make sense. Every year you advance further in a system of graduated responsibility until you become an attending. It would be nice if it were easier to switch fields or programs, but the different specialties do take care of different organ systems with their own unique pathology and skills needed for each.
- avocado4 7y agoIt should take much less time and money to become a doctor than the current status quo. We don't have to look too far - most OECD countries have a much easier path to becoming a doctor, with significantly lower prices and better population outcomes.
- scarmig 7y agoBut surely if those OECD countries don't put doctors through nearly a decade of hazing and well into the six figures of educational debt, they must have (more) patients dying left and right?
- jac241 7y agoThe poor population outcomes and lack of access to healthcare in America is shameful and disappointing. One of the big issues in my mind that comes from the debt is that it traps people who realize that they don't want to be doctors after they start medical school into the medical field. The other is that the debt loads are starting to exclude people from lower paying specialties (family medicine, pediatrics, infectious disease). The training time between US and other countries ends up being more or less the same when you add the fact that their residencies tend to be a little longer than in the US (due to less hours). Here is a list from the UK: https://thesavvyimg.co.uk/how-long-is-specialty-training-in-the-uk/ https://thesavvyimg.co.uk/how-long-is-specialty-training-in-.... Many of the surgical specialties that take 7-8 there take 5 here (urology, vascular surgery, etc.). So even if their pregraduate training is only 6 vs our 8, there are some specialties where it comes out to be a wash. There's also definitely hazing/long hours in some other countries as well. Here's an example of an Australian plastic surgery hopeful: https://mindbodymiko.com/the-ugly-side-of-becoming-a-surgeon/ https://mindbodymiko.com/the-ugly-side-of-becoming-a-surgeon...