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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."
The idea,s a bit sick (pun intended)
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...
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"Did you go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical School too?"
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I'm so excited to have you as a patient. I never had to cut anything open in med school and this is my first chance!
For gross anatomy, everyone will be mailed their own copy of the Operation! board game. These guys will be very good at diagnosing and fixing charlie horses and wrenched knees.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Just say you are studying to become a gynecologist.
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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.
...begins in wonder
Online schools deprive you of needed experience and interaction
Pssst, Bob! I accedently screwed up really big on a patient, but she does not respond to the reboot command. How do I start over?
Table-ized A.I.
Oh wait: it is
- undoware.ca
Whether it scares you or not, my medical school can be mostly attended online, as well.
All the lectures are recorded in RealAudio, and most of the lecturers show slides in PowerPoint (available for download). The ones that use standard overheads put the handouts in our mailboxes. The students pool together to make transcripts of the lectures, which are very high quality. Tests are online.
The upshot of this is about half of the class rarely attends lectures. Some students NEVER attend the lectures, live 2 hours away, and drive in once a week for the clinical stuff in the hospitals. Just today, a review lecture had an attendance of 14 people out of 160. (I was there because I had to record the RealAudio)
This is just for the first two "basic science" years. Years 3 and 4 are in the hospital wards, getting hands-on experience. Obviously, that can't be done over the web.
I've found that in med school, there is more of an attitude that the students are in charge, and an acknowledgement that people learn in different ways. The faculty will generally go out of their way to make sure you can get all the material. The students are motivated enough to learn on their own. If they learn best by skipping class, the faculty is OK with this.
Act now, and we'll mail you a cadaver -- FREE -- with your enrollment!
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.
Actually, as one who completed the first two years of medical school and then progressed to a Ph.D. program (don't know if I will go back), I can tell you that there is a tremendous amount of first hand experience that needs to occur and cannot be duplicated in a virtual environment. Many schools are now starting to integrate some pateint exposure to medical students in the first two years for instance. As for other "tangible" experiences, I only have to cite gross anatomy. This class absolutely must be taken by medical students and there is no virtual substitute for actually physically taking a body apart and learning where cavities are and how things fit together. For instance, where does blood pool when you have an internal bleed? How do the sinuses in the head relate to other structures? etc...etc...etc... This is possible to learn from an "academic" sense, but honestly, there is no substitute. Additionally, most gross anatomy classes are the first opportunity medical students get to touch bodies, and believe it or not, respect for the human body, and the sacrifice the donors made is something else that is an important experience.
As for the intern bit, yes, most physicians learn most from the first post graduate year, but you ABSOLUTELY do touch patients before your internship. You get to intubate, learn how to ascultate heart and breath sounds, interview patients assist with surgeries, set broken bones, suture wounds etc...etc...etc... all in your third and fourth years of medical school. Typically under the supervision of attending and senior residents of course.
I would be truly scared of anyone who did not have that experience before starting an intership and residency.
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"Brings a whole new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death", no?
Great, that's all I need; my doctor slips up while I'm on the operating table and he spends the next 5 minutes making motions with his hand as if to hit the "back" button on a web browser.
me: "Something wrong, Doc?"
doctor: "No.. at least... I don't think so. It's just that I've never seen a real live patient before; at least not I. R. L."
"Damn, nurse... brain surgery is sooo much easier when you can use two hands!"
nurse: "Doctor! Doctor! Have you ever had experience with this kind of disease?!
doctor: "Of course I have! Level 34, just before I grabbed the RailGun."
wife: "Doctor, is my husband... going to die?"
doctor: "Nah, if it gets too bad, I'll just pull the plug on the router and it'll look like we lost the connection. Then I'll try again."
*doctor smiles while the wife wonders what the hell he's talking about*
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That makes me a pilot!
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Initial financing for the project, amounting to $140,000, came from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council.
;-)
$24,917 * 7 = ~175k
Which, ironically, is about the cost of the tuition for the 7 years of med school for only one student. If they get two students, they will already be doubling their money
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Did you even read the article?
During the first two years of the curriculum, about 70 percent of the students' time would be taken up by distance learning, and the remainder by working in a community setting like a clinic or hospital. After that, the proportions would shift to about 30 percent computer-based learning and 70 percent working in a practice setting.
I don't know what's worse, the post or the idiots that modded it up.
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