<p>With the feeling that a student can major in a wide variety of subjects before applying to medical school, HHMI and the AAMC have now teamed up to report a study on their findings:
<a href="https://services.aamc.org/publications/showfile.cfm?file=version132.pdf&prd_id=262&prv_id=321&pdf_id=132%5B/url%5D">https://services.aamc.org/publications/showfile.cfm?file=version132.pdf&prd_id=262&prv_id=321&pdf_id=132</a> Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians 2009
"In recent years, members of the higher education community, individually
and through several expert panel reports, 1,2,3,4,5 have raised concerns about the
science content in the current premedical and medical education curricula.
These concerns are especially important given the increasingly rapid rate at
which new knowledge revises our understanding of the sciences fundamental
to medicine. There is widespread agreement that it is important to: (1) educate
future physicians to be inquisitive; (2) help them build a strong scientific
foundation for future medical practice; and (3) equip them with the knowledge,
skills, and habits of mind to integrate new scientific discovery into their
medical practice throughout their professional lives and to share this knowledge
with patients and other health care professionals.
With these issues in mind, the Association of American Medical Colleges
(AAMC) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) formed a
partnership to examine the natural science competencies that a graduating
physician needs to practice science-based medicine effectively with the goal of
achieving greater synergy and efficiency in the continuum of premedical and
medical education.
The AAMC and HHMI convened a group of scientists, physicians, and science
educators from small colleges, large universities, and medical schools around
the United States to determine the most important scientific competencies
required of students graduating from college prior to matriculating into medical
school as well as the scientific competencies required of medical school graduates
as they enter postgraduate training."</p>
<p>I skimmed through the link. Very interesting! Thanks for posting this.</p>
<p>Very interesting! I sent the link to one aspiring MD/PhD.</p>
<p>Interesting, but I’m sad to see that they don’t emphasize a few other things in the pre-med competencies: psychology of human behavior and cognition, and behavioral economics. The proposed listing of competencies focuses too much on the human as a machine, and yet for most doctors it is precisely those aspects where people don’t work like machines that pose some of the greatest challenges. Secondly, I’d like to see the premed requirements require a full semester - perhaps even a year-- of biostatistics, with a special emphasis on understanding the statistical strengths and weaknesses of various types of study designs. Too many practicing physicians rely on the drug industry’s representation of the results of studies, and often the representations go much further than the data supports, or are based on truly tiny numbers of individuals (or all men, or all younger subjects,…) – more statistical sophistication would go a long way toward curing this problem. I understand that they’re considering dropping O-chem and possibly calculus as med school pre-req’s, so this might not be a significant burden.</p>