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<p>There may be easy cases that any doctor can diagnose, but there are harder cases, too. Doctors sometimes misdiagnose patients. Some USMLE questions present scenarios and ask the test-taker to make a diagnosis. Isn’t it plausible that doctors who get fewer USMLE questions wrong also make fewer mistakes in treating patients? I would like to see a study of this. If there were no relationship we ought to get rid of the USMLE.</p>
<p>This thread is so off-topic, it’s in the next county.</p>
<p>To perseverate slightly about the OP, I do pay attention to overall college matriculation at our local public high school. Some years ago (8? could be 12) a letter to the editor of our local paper opined college placements weren’t what they “should be” from a system with such demographics. I started to pay attention. I believe the gentleman was right. He would still be right, were the article published today.</p>
<p>The question, “how did HE get in?” would be posed in our town for anyone who wasn’t an athlete. Some athletes are accepted to HYPSM. Very few other students are, although the high school has high average SAT scores, many families are able to pay full tuition, and yes, students do apply to reach schools. </p>
<p>One factor in the outcome may be the local bias against applying early. As recruited athletes apply early, the better placement for athletes may rise in part from their use of the early application system. </p>
<p>I am interested when someone’s result contradicts our local pattern. I am not criticizing college admissions decisions, because I do not believe our local high school is doing a good job guiding students through the college application process.</p>
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<p>It has little to do with class. Patients don’t want doctors who look weird, so its makes sense for medical schools and residencies to weed such people out. Piercings also carry health risks, and one would prefer not to have a doctor who does stupid things.</p>
<p>"Somehow, I cannot imagine Pizzagirl’s very wealthy, courtly Southern gentleman from an old, genteel family reacting well to any of them, if observed on someone interviewing for a residency. lookingforward, if I am guilty of stereotyping anyone, it’s the Southern gentleman. Perhaps he was actually broad-minded enough to look beyond the surface impressions. "</p>
<p>If I saw someone like that in a hospital, I would never go there again. </p>
<p>There is a certain level of decorum expected and I don’t expect most people to make it through medical school interviews if they are indulging in fashions unbecoming of a medical school aspirant.</p>
<p>Like smoke and be grossly overweight? I’m all for not allowing anyone that smokes or has a BMI in the ‘obese’ range to be in a health care professional position.</p>
<p>^Prescription drug addiction not unheard of among members of the medical profession as well…</p>
<p>With regard to health risks, apparently physicians’ neckties are linked to quite a lot of the patient-to-patient germ transmission in a hospital. I’m looking for people with bow ties or no neckwear at all.</p>
<p>I’d like to ask the posters who think the modes of dress that I mentioned are unprofessional: Why exactly do you classify them that way? How would you feel about kente cloth? (Not usually seen on professionals in this country, but some wear it). How about a Sikh in a turban? How do you draw the line between uncommon dress that meets your standards and uncommon dress that seems unprofessional to you?</p>
<p>I think this is actually relevant to admissions questions, although the recent focus has been on medical school/residency admissions.</p>
<p>Re: Obesity. I know a multiple marathon runner, whose times are in the 4 hour range (i.e…, 4:0x:xx times), about my age (old as dirt if you recall) who is within 15 pounds of being classified as “obese” on a BMI basis. He also cycles long distances.</p>
<p>He does not look at all heavy–not the least–although he is muscular.</p>
<p>At a routine check-up, one of his physicians advised him to be more active. (Definitely avoiding that guy, even if he is wearing a bow tie.)</p>
<p>So do you go by BMI, or by “looks obese”?</p>
<p>I am classified as ‘overweight’ by the BMI calculator. I am 5’7" and 160 lbs but heavily muscled from regular weighlifting. BMI is not the best measure but I just used it because most people are familiar with it.</p>
<p>Most physicians are totally clueless when it comes to nutrition and exercise.</p>
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I don’t know that they are unprofessional per se, but a doctor is providing a service to a particular clientele, and I think they need to consider the point of view of that clientele. Since most folks who frequent doctors are older, many of them might find percings and mohawks concerning. Whether it is rational or not. You wear a suit to an interview because you suspect that will be the most accepatble to the largest slice of the population (unless you happen to be interviewed by Steve Jobs).</p>
<p>In 15 years, it might not matter.</p>
<p>Note: Written by someone on the way to a dreaded doctor appointment. And no, my doctor doesn’t have a mohawk, or any piercings I know about. But he was referred by my HMO anyway, and I sort of have to take what they have to offer… And I only wish he was obese, then maybe he wouldn’t give me so much cr@p about my own weight.</p>
<p>bovertine, #650: on one level, I understand that, of course. It’s the pop-sociologist in me asking, “Why?” But really, why? What clientele does that pre-suppose? </p>
<p>I think the service academies give BMI waivers based on % body fat, because they run into the problem of apparent obesity with athletes (could be wrong about this).</p>
<p>I find obesity troublesome as an issue, because it seems ok to ridicule/discriminate against the obese. Yet obesity is definitely class-linked right now in the US, and I believe that the link is particularly strong among people in their teens and mid-twenties.</p>
<p>Among people in their fifties, I suspect that there is a strong link between obesity and the total time spent working (or goofing around on cc in the interstices of work, la la la).</p>
<p>I sympathize, bovertine–I breathe a sigh of relief when I am escorted into a physician’s office by a nurse who weighs about 50% more than I do (at a guess).</p>
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Well, I’m talking US patients first off.</p>
<p>I’m presupposing a signifcant portion of the clientele in many doctors’ offices will be 75+. I think the last thing somebody needs who is already under the stress of a disease is something unexpected that makes them uncomfortable, for whatever reason. Of course Sikh headdress, Muslimk haircovering, that sort of thing - well, around here so many doctors have that sort of stuff it is not unusual. Plus it’s a religious thing which I consider slightly different (unless of course your religion requires you to smoke pot before surgery).</p>
<p>OTOH, young folks in this society are much more used to dealing with “conventional” looking doctors, they won’t likely get freaked out if their GP isn’t sporting a Maori face tat.</p>
<p>BTW - excessive tats, piercings, mohawks - I personally might be surprised but I wouldn’t judge or be concerned necessarily. I’d wait until I spoke to the doc.</p>
<p>We can only go so far in presupposing the age range. More eldery have more doc visits, but the training and standards cover all ages. </p>
<p>The reason I’ve seen quoted that med schools like humanities majors, as well, has to do with the reading skills and critical thinking skills. Not “BS” or whatever “next mistake” you want to vent about. You can major in what you like, as long as you meet the pre-med coursework. Miss it for some reason (or not do well enough in it, in college) and you can do a post-bacc. The mcat changes are to round out a med student’s understanding of people, human nature, etc, by adding certain courses. Not to instill the compassion needed in docs. Compassion and some experience in the health field do matter in med school admissions. Oh, maybe not so much at some doc mill, but at the elites, which can choose the kids they feel will best represent them, as grads. </p>
<p>Like it or not, in many professions, appearance matters. That’s not prejudice or artificial line drawing or “imposing” one social tier’s standards on another. Kids can learn. The best of them are adaptable and aware. The med students who don’t get this are gently corrected until they do. It doesn’t matter if the person correcting them is a genteel Southerner or a former inner city person. The kid who showed up with lab detritis all over his lab coat was taken aside. The gal who literally couldn’t be heard, was advised, numerous times, to speak up. The guy with an earring, fine. None of this hinged on their stats. It was an extra part of their professional expectations. </p>
<p>I just dropped one of my docs, a Harvard Magna AOA, for his inability to communicate (long tale, irrelevant.) And, he’s an athlete- even wears a bow tie.</p>
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<p>Funny–I have the opposite reaction. Nurses (and doctors) who are in the business of promoting good health should model that behavior themselves. But the weight issue doesn’t bother me as much as when I see a group of nurses smoking outside the hospital as I drive by.</p>
<p>ETA: Sorry, haystack just said the same thing. Didn’t read back far enough.</p>
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<p>In some cases, X symptoms may mean any one of Y1, Y2, Y3, etc. conditions. If it is Y1, there may be various options of Z1, Z2, Z3, etc., whose effectiveness and suitability may vary depending on the patient, though the nature of the doctor may be a significant factor in the choice of treatments (e.g. favors aggressive or conservative treatment in general, or knows about Z2 more than Z1 or Z3, etc.).</p>
<p>^ That’s why we have specialists, who focus on, here, x, y and z. When it gets beyond your regular doc’s expertise, you want to be referred to a competent specialist. No matter what his or her stats were or that it was Harvard med vs somewhere else. Or whether his BMI passes muster. Med training comes in layers. The successive layers and a (training) doc’s exposure to other specialists matters much. There is no one shaman purporting cure it all with the hot knife or magic elixir.</p>
<p>I don’t believe someone needs to be compassionate to become a doctor. A doctor should cry for every patient that dies or for a child with cancer. Death exist for a reason.
We should keep in mind that doctors are human being to, and just like us the have different personality, with their style of fashion. If patients are allowed to visit a hospital with tatoos and piercing, than a doctor should be allowed to have tatoo with piercing.</p>
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<p>BMI is not necessarily a reliable indicator of obesity on an individual basis.
<a href=“http://a.espncdn.com/media/motion/2013/0224/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd.jpg[/url]”>http://a.espncdn.com/media/motion/2013/0224/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd.jpg</a></p>
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<p>Muscle is heavy, so someone who looks muscular looks heavy, though not in the same way that an obese person looks heavy. (Although some people can be both muscular and obese in body fat terms.)</p>
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<p>It is not just for the academy students, but for all servicemembers.</p>
<p><a href=“Request Information | goarmy.com”>Request Information | goarmy.com; says:</p>
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<p>However, specialists in some cases may be biased in favor of more aggressive treatment. For example, urologists tend to push prostate cancer screening with PSA tests, even though its value is dubious for most men according to the [url=<a href=“http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/prostatecancerscreening.htm]USPSTF[/url”>http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/prostatecancerscreening.htm]USPSTF[/url</a>]. Oral surgeons favor prophylactic wisdom tooth removal, instead of doing so only when there is actual trouble with them.</p>
![http://a.espncdn.com/media/motion/2013/0224/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd.jpg[/url]](http://a.espncdn.com/media/motion/2013/0224/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd/dm_130224_nfl_CombineRptSUnd.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
