Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence
https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-fai...utlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/If true this is very troubling.
Up to half of UCLA medical students now fail basic tests of medical competence
- Thread starter Dave Hess
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If true this is very troubling.
Another one of many things lately that don't surprise me.
Dont worry about the doctors. By the time you get an appointment after a few years, they may have practiced enough to not outright kill you.
More than half of our high schoolers should not be able to graduate.
Nine out of ten cashiers can't do the mental math to make change and are incapable of counting back change properly or at all. They also don't know how to properly hand over the receipt and the change. I had one Home Depot cashier wrap an undeclared amount of change in the receipt. I refused to accept that bundle and asked him what he was giving me back. He didn't know.
One hundred percent of HR people at my place of employment should be decommissioned, retired with extreme prejudice, or sent into deep space. I have been dropping this suggestion into the HR suggestions box for years!
More than half of our high schoolers should not be able to graduate.
Nine out of ten cashiers can't do the mental math to make change and are incapable of counting back change properly or at all. They also don't know how to properly hand over the receipt and the change. I had one Home Depot cashier wrap an undeclared amount of change in the receipt. I refused to accept that bundle and asked him what he was giving me back. He didn't know.
One hundred percent of HR people at my place of employment should be decommissioned, retired with extreme prejudice, or sent into deep space. I have been dropping this suggestion into the HR suggestions box for years!
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Sounds like "Journalism students" from CU Boulder. I call them opinionists. I have a degree in Journalism and am disappointed by what people call Journalism. True journalists dig deep. My mom saw this as well after retiring as a P.A. working in Urology. Overseas isn't much better. She taught a few classes in England as the UK is trying to add P.A's to their practice. One lady was from an eastern block country and was the Town Doctor at 27 years old!
I think the no child left behind legislation is probably the biggest impact on students. IMO, the first time many folks will fail is when they don't get that job they applied for.
Just my $0.02
Just my $0.02
It's already "time to start worrying".....the USA has gone from having students near the top in the world to way down that list. "Social Promotion' rather than MERIT is the cause.
"The Washington Free Beacon - Covering the enemies of freedom the way mainstream media won't"
I am sure this publication is a paragon of unbiased information, free from prejudice and any slant or bias.
It boggles my mind that people condemn media outlets because of "agendas" and turn to garbage like this. I mean, the "agenda" is literally spelled out on the landing page.
This "news" organization is the propaganda arm of lobby group, funded by a billionaire. Hey, isn't that the same reason certain types of people use for not reading The Washington Post?
I am sure this publication is a paragon of unbiased information, free from prejudice and any slant or bias.
It boggles my mind that people condemn media outlets because of "agendas" and turn to garbage like this. I mean, the "agenda" is literally spelled out on the landing page.
This "news" organization is the propaganda arm of lobby group, funded by a billionaire. Hey, isn't that the same reason certain types of people use for not reading The Washington Post?
The Washington Post is owned by Bezos and their motto of "Democracy dies in Darkness" is laughable....they are certainly not a "paragon of unbiased information"....
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Sure but finding a competent or even excellent professional in most fields is getting more difficult all the time. I seriously feel we are on the downward trajectory of a sliding scale in general performance and access to excellent service.
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College in America has turned into a very expensive daycare for adults.
As many of you know, I'm a dentist, but I was lucky enough to go to a school where for the first two years the medical and dental students are mixed together for all of their first and second-year basic medical science course work. Many dental schools have different classes for medical and dental but where I trained it was the same profs, sitting in the same classes, taking the same tests with the only exception being a 2-week module at the end of the second year on reproductive pathology. That exception is due to the timing of part 1 on the dental boards. For 3rd and 4th years the medical and dental students go their separate ways to start practicing our respective clinical skills.
All this is to say, I have a great understanding of what basic medical science education was 20 years ago. The first two years were no joke. Class M-F from 8am and 12pm where every hour the prof and subject would change. We did not have separate courses for biochem, anatomy, and physiology and instead, it was one large course where you learned based on organ systems. So if you were studying the cardiovascular system, someone would lecture on the anatomy, and then physiology and then pharmacology of the heart, vasculature, etc. This was tied into the anatomy lab where we dissected the entire human body plus learned how to read MRIs, CTs, x-rays, and histology lab. Second year you basically did all the same topics but now you discussed the pathophysiology of each organ system. An average test was approximately 120 hours of lecture material and it was a 4-6 hour long written exam and an anatomy/histology practical. You only had 6 of these exams each year and they had a moving passing score based on how well the class did. Essentially, year to year, scores were very consistent, and they would move the passing score up or down a bit so the bottom 20% failed. If you failed more than one exam in a year, you repeated that year. Every year multiple students repeated the year. If the class average was a 72, the fail would be a 68 with the highest grade in the 160-person class being maybe an 80 or on rare occasions an 85. That meant 20% failed, 70% sat just above failing, and 10% did well enough to not be on the constant verge of failing. They did it this way because they wanted most people to be on the verge of failing all the time because it's ONE HECK OF A MOTIVATOR. How did this system work? We were given 4 days to study for part 1 of our boards which covered the basic medical sciences, and having no time off and just finishing second year, I played World of Warcraft for those 4 days and scored a 96 on part 1 and my class average was 94 - highest in the country that year. Matter-of-fact, I finished the 5-hour exam in 2-hours.
So I know I'm well trained. When I went to residency and compared myself to others I could see I was well trained. What was the downside? This was a grueling 2 years. 120 lecture hours plus anatomy lab plus histology lab per exam was a HUGE amount of material to try and learn and this doesn't even count my dental courses. I was in class from 8am-12pm doing basic medical sciences, dental courses from 1pm-5pm, and I studied at home from 6pm-10pm M-F and from 7am to 7pm Saturday and Sunday. My classmates and I were exhausted, clinically depressed, and I remember feeling an absurd amount of pressure constantly. We lived in constant fear of failing. The profs were demanding and most were not nice. There was little to no sympathy for underperforming. I was a straight-A student in college, I'm a straight-A student in my MBA, and neither is anywhere close to what I experienced in medical school. In residency, we were slave labor and we'd be up and working sometimes for 18 hours routinely, 7-days per week. In the ED at 3am, all day in the OR or clinic, and doing various rotations during the day and night. I'm not complaining as that's a fraction of what many surgery residents see but hey, I'm a dentist. Now I'm not saying this is the right way to do it, just that what I experienced and it led to well-trained physicians and dentists.
How has it changed? I have a friend from school who is now a urologist who teaches at a residency program. One morning she was sitting and eating breakfast reading a journal article and she noticed an intern who she taught and she called her over just to say hey this was interesting and with an annoyed face the intern said, "It's 6:57am, I don't start until 7am." Parents routinely now come to medical/dental school and residency interviews. Parents now routinely email about grades on exams. Faculty now have to make many more special accommodations for students with emotional and mental issues. This training is not for everyone. It's brutal out of necessity because there is just so much information and so little time and it can not be made "easier" without sacrificing competency and safety. You need the top students, regardless of ethnicity or social background, to not degrade the training process. If someone doesn't have the background or the grades or the history of performing at a very high level, they will likely not meet the high standards needed in medical school and that is a disservice to them, the school, patients, and society. FWIW...we had plenty of kids of color who were top students, all but one of them are now oral surgeons having trained after dental school at some of the most prestigious and demanding OS residencies and fellowships.
All this is to say, I have a great understanding of what basic medical science education was 20 years ago. The first two years were no joke. Class M-F from 8am and 12pm where every hour the prof and subject would change. We did not have separate courses for biochem, anatomy, and physiology and instead, it was one large course where you learned based on organ systems. So if you were studying the cardiovascular system, someone would lecture on the anatomy, and then physiology and then pharmacology of the heart, vasculature, etc. This was tied into the anatomy lab where we dissected the entire human body plus learned how to read MRIs, CTs, x-rays, and histology lab. Second year you basically did all the same topics but now you discussed the pathophysiology of each organ system. An average test was approximately 120 hours of lecture material and it was a 4-6 hour long written exam and an anatomy/histology practical. You only had 6 of these exams each year and they had a moving passing score based on how well the class did. Essentially, year to year, scores were very consistent, and they would move the passing score up or down a bit so the bottom 20% failed. If you failed more than one exam in a year, you repeated that year. Every year multiple students repeated the year. If the class average was a 72, the fail would be a 68 with the highest grade in the 160-person class being maybe an 80 or on rare occasions an 85. That meant 20% failed, 70% sat just above failing, and 10% did well enough to not be on the constant verge of failing. They did it this way because they wanted most people to be on the verge of failing all the time because it's ONE HECK OF A MOTIVATOR. How did this system work? We were given 4 days to study for part 1 of our boards which covered the basic medical sciences, and having no time off and just finishing second year, I played World of Warcraft for those 4 days and scored a 96 on part 1 and my class average was 94 - highest in the country that year. Matter-of-fact, I finished the 5-hour exam in 2-hours.
So I know I'm well trained. When I went to residency and compared myself to others I could see I was well trained. What was the downside? This was a grueling 2 years. 120 lecture hours plus anatomy lab plus histology lab per exam was a HUGE amount of material to try and learn and this doesn't even count my dental courses. I was in class from 8am-12pm doing basic medical sciences, dental courses from 1pm-5pm, and I studied at home from 6pm-10pm M-F and from 7am to 7pm Saturday and Sunday. My classmates and I were exhausted, clinically depressed, and I remember feeling an absurd amount of pressure constantly. We lived in constant fear of failing. The profs were demanding and most were not nice. There was little to no sympathy for underperforming. I was a straight-A student in college, I'm a straight-A student in my MBA, and neither is anywhere close to what I experienced in medical school. In residency, we were slave labor and we'd be up and working sometimes for 18 hours routinely, 7-days per week. In the ED at 3am, all day in the OR or clinic, and doing various rotations during the day and night. I'm not complaining as that's a fraction of what many surgery residents see but hey, I'm a dentist. Now I'm not saying this is the right way to do it, just that what I experienced and it led to well-trained physicians and dentists.
How has it changed? I have a friend from school who is now a urologist who teaches at a residency program. One morning she was sitting and eating breakfast reading a journal article and she noticed an intern who she taught and she called her over just to say hey this was interesting and with an annoyed face the intern said, "It's 6:57am, I don't start until 7am." Parents routinely now come to medical/dental school and residency interviews. Parents now routinely email about grades on exams. Faculty now have to make many more special accommodations for students with emotional and mental issues. This training is not for everyone. It's brutal out of necessity because there is just so much information and so little time and it can not be made "easier" without sacrificing competency and safety. You need the top students, regardless of ethnicity or social background, to not degrade the training process. If someone doesn't have the background or the grades or the history of performing at a very high level, they will likely not meet the high standards needed in medical school and that is a disservice to them, the school, patients, and society. FWIW...we had plenty of kids of color who were top students, all but one of them are now oral surgeons having trained after dental school at some of the most prestigious and demanding OS residencies and fellowships.
Sure attack the source
Typical
Give us the facts- I can tell you doctors and their protocol is not the path to health which is indeed anecdotal at best but does fit
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While I agree with the sentiment here, we must also consider the tests and standards themselves.
The vast majority of those rankings we see in headlines which compare testing scores / academia in the USA to other countries are comparing apples to oranges.
Other countries also have the same pitfalls the US does.
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