<p>curmudgeon
You are totally correct. Each is time consuming. I went to a “top ranked” med school and I still had plenty of time to go camping on week ends, enjoy friends, etc - but studied until MN every night and then went and grilled hamburgers for an hour at a bar to relax. (got paid drink and food). My internship was hell - but probably one of the best times of my life (aka boot camp)</p>
<p>I have a good friend who is a professional musician and she practices six hours a night.</p>
<p>Jim Plunket was a great friend and he “worked” his ass off.</p>
<p>“True, but isn’t this also true of any graduate/professional study?”
-I have an MBA. No, it is not true at all for MBA. MBA is actually easier than UG Business classes as it does not go into details as much. Many go for MBA while wrking full time as many employers are paying for it. It was my reason to do MBA, I do not need it for my job at all. </p>
<p>"My son described the difference between undergrad and med school as follows: In undergrad he could do moderate amounts of work, but then really study hard before an exam. In med school, the volume is so huge, you must put in lots of time daily. You cannot fall behind. It’s the unrelenting quantity of information. "
-This is exactly how my D. feels. The only difference is Biochem. I am not sure about details with Biochem, have to get it from her, maybe it is more conceptual area at Med. School, just speculatiing. But D. had ridiculously easy time with Biochem in UG , was bored out of mind in classes and labs. She likes it when it is challenging. It is plenty challenging at Med. School, I believe she enjoys it and she likes her classmates too.</p>
<p>Biochem: I believe Bicochem textbook is the few of UG textbooks that DS took to his medical school. The other few may be physiology and cell bio. I am not very very about the cell bio, because that cell bio textbook, as I heard, is a tome and medical school students likely do not do cell bio in the same way as in UG, where the purpose is to prepare the students for the PhD track rather than the professional school trac, I think.</p>
<p>I heard his UG biochem (esp. its lab) is quite grueling, as it is one of the classes (or one of the last "battleground?) in which premeds competed head-to-head against each other. The lab is longer than orgo lab (double-sized in time each week but only half a semester.)</p>
<p>There is a track of biochem series who really trains the students to be researchers. I heard in that series of classes, working hard does not guaranteed a good grade, as some of the test items are like IQ tests rather than what you can study hard and then get a good grade in the test – What is tested may not be from the textbook, likely from the professor’s research paper which may not be mentioned in the lecture. The husband of the professor (who is in the same department) won Nobel prize a couple of years ago and it is rumored that the wife is almost as good as a researcher. They really want to groom the next academic superstars.</p>
<p>I also heard UPenn’s biochem is a biggie. The test is held on Saturday as it takes more than half a day or somthing like that. This is a reason many students who are into “premed-style” sciences (read: introductory sciences) only flee from oure science departments once they have secured “good enough” science GPAs in their introductory science classes. Premed phenomenon!</p>
<p>never thought my thread would start such a long debate, but it’s interesting nonetheless! Sounds like having excellent time management skills will be critical to the success of a healthy work/play balance in med school.</p>
<p>There really is not a “healthy” work/play balance in medical school (except for fourth year electives after AI’s). The material in medical school is not difficult conceptually, but it is a huge amount of work (especially if you are attempting to be inducted into AOA). Residency and fellowship are even more work. A “healthy” work/play balance is challenging as a practicing physician in many fields. However, it is definitely worth the sacrifice. As our medical care continues to evolve with decreasing reimbursements, hospitalists etc I suspect the “balanced” life for many physicians will be inversely related to their shrinking salaries.</p>
<p>I suspect the rigor of a medical students undergraduate education determines the viewed difficulty of medical school.</p>
<p>^^ I don’t understand why physicians salaries are being cut. The VAST MAJORITY of the rising health care costs in this country are due to the high cost of new medical technology. If Americans insist on using the newest/latest technology for their treatment, don’t whine when it comes time to pay up. If you look at countries with nationalized healthcare, MOST patients do not have IMMEDIATE access to the newest/latest technology. I was talking to an internal medicine doc. from the UK and he told me that for the vast majority of new drugs, his patients have to wait 2 years before they are allowed access to it. In the U.S. that is not always the case. You can’t expect to cut down the high costs of healthcare in this country by slashing physicians salaries, because physicians salaries are A SMALL part of the high costs of healthcare in this nation. The government needs to directly address the high costs medical technology if it REALLY wants to decrease the high costs of healthcare instead of trying to fool the public that it is doing something about the high costs of healthcare by slashing physicians salaries. Anyone who has taken a basic Econ course knows this much.</p>
Just a wild guess here: Maybe there are two reasons:
As compared to 99%, the top 1% has more say about how the health care of this country should be.
People are just not willing to accept the fact that those who “have”, as compared to people who “have not”, always have better access to things are scarce and valuable (e.g., new medical technology.) It was like this in the past, and it is the same (to a less extent – so it has been an improvement.)</p>
<p>Social engineering on the ground of humanity can only do so much, and the accuse of “death panel” run by government is just non-sense. If the government does not do it, the free society would do it by necessity anyway due to limited resources and the “have” always have an upper hand to secure it when not everybody can access it.</p>
<p>Re: “trying to fool the public…”: I even suspect that the powerful and greedy ones (likely from both parties) may really want to keep the health care cost high in order to maximize their profits. This is because the bigger the money flow here, the big pharma and the few insurance companies in monopoly could produce more profits for those who have control of these money machines. In a sense, it is not that different than the fact that some powerful ones want to start wars at the expense of everybody’s current and future money (i.e., the debt of future generations) and OTHER people’s precious life (those in uniform are mostly from the poorer families whose younger ones tend to have fewer promising career choices) because the money will likely get into these people’s pockets.</p>
<p>So some really want to fool people on purpose and unfortunately there are always too many fools who like to listen to them.</p>
<ul>
<li>someone > 50 can have dialysis paid for by the government
<ul>
<li> where someone on death row can have a heart transplant and spend > $1,000,000 on hospital care</li>
<li> where someone in a severe coma can be kpt alive for > $1,000,000</li>
</ul></li>
<li> where a $1,000 test is done for the 1:10,000 the test is needed</li>
</ul>
<p>Until Americans do not feel they have the right to spend others money for low chance …</p>
<p>“I heard his UG biochem (esp. its lab) is quite grueling”</p>
<p>-It must depend on UG as D. felt like wasting her time in UG Biochem. She realized in Med. School, that it was not true at all and she did learn a lot of usefull material. But she was bored in both UG Bichem lectures and labs to the point that whe was happy to have a friend to talk to during UG Biochem labs to keep her awake and alert. Her UG also had different Biochems so she could have taken the easy one.
D. did not keep many of her UG books. She kept the one for abnormal psych., not sure if she kept anything else.</p>
<p>Grad Student (PhD) courses are much harder and more in depth than most medical school courses which are “watered down” </p>
<p>If you live in a nation with nationalized health care (eg Canada), you cannot get dialysis if you are older than 50 - 60 years of age (unless you pay cash)</p>
<p>Until Americans don’t believe they “have a right” to be the one in a million, our costs will never go down</p>
<p>Canada does not have “nationalized health care”. They have a single payer system. There is NO age limit for dialysis or anything else that I know. Do you have any references? I would love to know where this came from. </p>
<p>Whatever is in Canada and whatever label it has, canadians are coming to the USA for medical care in large numbers despite the fact that they have to pay awesomely for it. MD’s in Detroit know it pretty well. I do not know any statistics, just anecdotal but very significant evidence. Nationalized/single payer or whatever it is called does not work and it is especially bad for people in most risk, elderly and infant. Do you want to know why? Very easy - they are “unproductive” resources of society. If you want socialism, that is how it looks at people, forget about humanity, it does not exist under this concept. But we are not allowed to discuss politics here anyway, just wanted to mention that the name is not that important, it is centrally controlled no matter how you call it.</p>
<p>@MiamiDAP, yes, no politics. Why did you feel the need to make the post? If you would like to discuss it in another venue, I would be happy to participate.</p>
<p>plum
Have many Canadian citizens when I was in Chicago who came over because their National Health Care (Canada Health Act requires that all insured persons be fully insured, without co-payments or user fees, for all medically necessary hospital and physician care. About 91% of hospital expenditures and 99% of total physician services are financed by the public sector). In Canada, if you pay cash, you can get things done. </p>
<p>@PD,
I know a little about Canada. I lived there for several years. That’s where I learned French. Their system is “Single Payer”, where the providers are PRIVATE. In GB, the system is “nationalized”. A very different system than in Canada. </p>
<p>If that opinion piece is all you have and If I were you, I would retract your previous post about the 50 yo age limit and apologize to the board for the hyperbole. But that’s just me :)</p>
<p>^bold move, high schooler challenging respected and established physician on health care reform and health systems. </p>
<p>Additionally, The American Journal of Kidney Diseases is a far more reliable and researched (and peer reviewed) source than USA Today. The article referenced is probably more accurately categorized as a review article, not an opinion piece.</p>
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<p>(I imagine PD won’t even respond, not because of a lack of knowledge about the subject, but because of a lack of respect from posters on this board. What on Earth does he have to apologize for, and furthermore, what has anyone here done to warrant an apology?)</p>
<p>Thanks, kristin, for providing supporting material for well known to most of us (more so the ones who live close to Canandian border) facts. “Centrally contorlled” is the key, the actual the way it is called does not matter, essentials are the same, although system may appear totally different to some who lack in general life experience. Some of us have life experineces that they wish they did not have at all…but at least we have learned.</p>
<p>Well, I have made every effort to abide by the TOS, and to remain completely civil on this board, however, I am nobody’s punching bag. I would have responded yesterday, but I spent the evening wrestling with Rachmaninoff </p>
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<p>@kristin5792, I sure hope your powers of observation are better than you demonstrate here. Since my university and graduating year are clearly posted on my Id tag, you are either blind or attempting to make some lame insult. I will not reciprocate, I’m better than that.</p>
<p>As for “respect”, that’s earned. When someone post false comments on this board, when (according to you) they certainly should know better, that is not the behavior one would expect from a “respected” person. The fact that YOU would ignore this, says something about you. You either didn’t bother to read the entire exchange before offering your .2 cents, OR you are ignorant of the facts, and/or an intellectual sloth. Since PD then contradicted himself with his last post, the TRUTH of his original comment that …
… is no longer a subject for debate. It was false. Yet instead of staying on topic, you attack me? Are you PD’s alter-ego?</li>
</ul>
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