<p>what's the deal here with these 2 separate rankings?</p>
<p>primary care is better for people who want to practice, and research-geared schools are better for people who want to do research at the NIH or something?</p>
<p>and why are primary care rankings a little "messed up?" As in, Harvard isn't so great, and Yale isn't even ranked. do these top schools not care about teaching their students the practical side of medicine?</p>
<p>primary care rankings are based on the percentage of students who go into primary care.</p>
<p>Every medical school is going to have a focus. And yes to a certain extent, you can say that there are some highly regarded research schools that aren't that interested in producing physicians who are just going to go out into the community and practice. </p>
<p>My school is one of the more highly ranked Primary care programs, and i can tell you that there is a lot of effort expended into getting students into positions so that they will end up as physicians in the community. Whether it's doing a 3 week rural block between M1 and M2 years (as far as I know we're the only medical school in the country with a required clinical experience during that time period), or having 8 weeks of Family medicine - again rural - during third year instead of any required time on neurology or ER, or having 12 weeks of internal medicine in which 6 weeks are on inpatient medicine, there is a lot time put towards making us doctors, and zero time or effort spent on making us researchers. There are even opportunities for those who know they want to go into primary care (either Family or internal) to do an early residency placement and enter a specialized residency program during the 4th year of medical school instead of the typical 4th year schedule. </p>
<p>That said, the rankings themselves are based on the % of 4th year students going into a primary care field for residency. I believe they count only Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Family med and OB/GYN as "primary care residencies" (probably med/peds too). This is regardless of the students actual career aspirations. For example, I know that I want to be a peds subspecialist - either cards, pulm, critical care or GI. But if I go into a ped residency, I'll count as part of the % of students going into a PC residency, even though I have zero intention of ever becoming a generalist pediatrician.</p>
<p>Don't confuse "primary care" with "clinical." Many top schools produce few primary care physicians (peds, family med, internal med, etc.) but offer great clinical training. Their graduates happen to specialize (go into derm, radiology, surgery, whatever). Since many of these specialities recommend/require research, it's not surprising that many of the top schools in the research ranking suffer in the primary care ranking.</p>
<p>Anyway, the primary care ranking is fairly useless and the research ranking almost as useless if your plan is to become a clinician.</p>
<p>thanks for the post</p>
<p>could you explain further how the rankings are based? so the higher the % of people going into primary care, the higher the rank?</p>
<p>i plan to specialize</p>
<p>For the research ranking, NIH research funding is, not surprisingly, a huge part of the equation. The schools ranking higher on the research ranking tend to produce a greater proportion of specialists. Because, like I said, many competitive specialities practically demand research.</p>
<p>For the primary care ranking, the % of graduates going into primary care is important. These schools, by definition, would produce a smaller proportion of specialists. </p>
<p>Most med schools do some kind of research so you'll be able to do research even at a school not ranked high on the research list. Likewise, you can always get into primary care fields from any med school. It's about the environment really. Top research schools (like Stanford or WashU) really promote research and a high percentage of their students do research as med students. Other schools (like UC Davis) really promote primary care and a large percentage of its students are interested in rural medicine or primary care. You just have to find the right environment for yourself.</p>
<p>I've been meaning to get to this for a couple days...</p>
<p>
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For the primary care ranking, the % of graduates going into primary care is important. These schools, by definition, would produce a smaller proportion of specialsts.
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</p>
<p>But see, even that's not a correct statement and hence the real flaw with the USNWR ranking - if you want to do electrophys cardiology or DEM or ID or rheum or whatever, you do an internal medicine residency, which regardless of your career intentions, elevates your school's % going into primary care.</p>
<p>Yeah.. USNWR is just weird.</p>
<p>Noone should pay attention to their rankings, but then that puts us in a spot where we don't have any rankings to look at =P</p>
<p>so, since primary care schools are ranked solely on the percent who go into the field, does that accurately reflect the quality of those schools' medical programs?</p>
<p>Several points:
1.) The methodologies are publicly available on usnews.com, so there's no need to go speculating about them.
2.) Primary Care rankings are NOT solely based upon the percentage of grads going into primary care. Several criteria are important in both rankings, such as peer reputation scores, student selectivity, and others.
3.) In fact, as BRM points out above, their definition of "primary care" is fairly poor to begin with. Frankly, they need to just use Family Practice spots.
4.) Research rankings are pretty well constructed -- if you want to go into research. What you're asking for is a clinical specialty ranking, which simply doesn't exist.
5.) The Primary Care rankings are useless, period. Compare the rankings published in 2007 vs. the ones that came out about a month ago -- you can see that several schools jumped or dropped by as much as thirty or forty spots. That kind of volatility tells you that the rankings are not useful, even for their designed purpose -- which, even then, is not what you're really asking for.</p>
<p>where can we find these rankings? (for research)</p>