Organizers Plan Online Medical School

slashdot_commentator writes "Job has you down? Thinking of starting a second career? How about finally getting that medical degree you've been putting off? A group of more than 50 schools in 16 countries are working to create an online medical school, in part to combat the "brain drain" that occurs when medical students go abroad for their education but do not return later. ... Organizers said that because degrees would be granted by individual participating schools, all of which are accredited, students should not have to worry about accreditation problems."

Comments

Been Done

[mwalker]

As I recall, right in the middle of the dot-com boom Microsoft started an online, collaborative center for Medical education by buying out a bunch of sites. It was called the "MSN Healing Zone" and didn't last for very long...

What you study is a small part of med school

[akookieone]

IANAD, but I'm married to one. And having seen her go through Harvard Med, all I can say is that what she learned that was bookish or memorized was only a small part of her education. And I don't mean things as obvious as surgery, which you really don't learn as a med student anyway. Here is a short list of things you don't learn studying a screen: clinical judgement, the physical exam (how does a healthy liver feel?), reading films and slides, not to mention patient interaction in order to get as close-to-accurate info as possible. Pretty quick in med school, you start working wiht patients, and just getting comfortable and good at the interview, exam, and writing a good note about it is not easy.
If you can put it online to learn it, you can also go online to look it up. I want a doctor who has the skills, perceptions, and judgement you get by doing.

Re:Med School vs. Internship

[Bowling Moses]

I disagree. I have a friend who is starting out at med school, and the very first week they had her and her classmates assigned to a doctor to accompany him/her on their rounds and to get them started up taking blood pressure, reading charts, real basic stuff. What they were *really* supposed to be learning was how to act around patients with tact and confidence. Lets face it; if the Dr. acts like a schmuck when you come in for whatever, you're not going to trust them. Also, like you mentioned there is nothing quite like working on a cadaver--when I was an undergrad I had to dissect quite a few organisms to understand physiology and the computer simulations while good are not as good as the real thing. Plus if you're working on a cadaver, it hammers home that you're going to be working on *people* like no computer simulation ever could. As for the wrote memorization biochemistry for med students or whatnot, I don't know about you but my lecture/memorization courses were *always* accompanied by labs to help you understand the material in context. These online degrees are generally inferior and I sure as hell don't want my doctor to have been "educated" in one.