Can you imagine FDR telling Enrico Fermi that his proposals for the atomic bomb are all wrong because the calculations for his pile are incorrect?
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Never said that or implied It. Your doctor has to be smart and well trained. I just feel there are diminishing returns with intellect after a certain point. Interpersonal interactions are also very important. If you can’t get the patient to tell you what you need to know or you can’t pay attention long enough to hear everything he has to say, not even a doctor as smart as Einstein will be able figure it out. It’s like trying to solve a multivariable equation with several of the necessary variables missing from the equation
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How would you know how “amenable” he was to students when they never presented a petition or sought to engage in dialog with him? In prior years he responded to student concerns presented directly to him. Perhaps he would have this time, too. I have always encouraged my kids to speak with the professor directly if they have issues. They mastered that during high school.
How do we know that a future doctor has the intellect that meets or exceeds that “certain point”? Also, how do we measure her/his skills in “interpersonal interactions” before admitting her/him to a medical school?
Among many other reasons, because the longtime chair of his department indicated as much:
(Canary) felt that his communication with students was skeletal and sometimes perceived as harsh.
“He hasn’t changed his style or methods in a good many years,” Dr. Canary said. “The students have changed, though, and they were asking for and expecting more support from the faculty when they’re struggling.”
And given that he refused to even engage in dialogue with the deans about which students he should be teaching, and given his changes from a few years before don’t seem to have helped, it is hard to imagine that further dialogue with the students would have been all that productive.
If you want to go on believing that this professor was at the top of his game and was flexible and responsible to the student needs, nothing I write will convince you otherwise.
Its another area where we’ll just have have to agree to disagree.
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Medical School? Medical Board Exams? Residency? Practice? Licensure requirements?
Im no doctor, but I’m having trouble understand why Organic Chemistry should be the litmus test here.
Hence the “snowflake” moniker. Somehow physicians have made it through the rigors of undergrad and medical school for decades but this generation requires “kid glove treatment”.
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I honestly don’t have an answer to the question. I am merely expressing my own opinion based upon my personal experience and observation. I readily acknowledge that my opinions could be incorrect.
We are talking about organic chemistry because the original article was about NYU’s organic chemistry class. I think many physicians would agree that organic chemistry was among the least useful required classes they took in college. I personally can’t remember more than 1% of the material that I supposedly learned taking organic chemistry in college.
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Never claimed he was at the top of his game; for most of us that was 35-55. I just dont see much sign of age related decline, and the faculty sought his reappointment, which frankly matters much more than your opinion or mine.
He, as a contract prof, taught hundreds of undergrads a core course, one of the larger courses there. I might have expected the faculty to have moved him years ago to a seminar or elective if there really was a concern.
I honestly don’t know whether organic chemistry should be the litmus test, but I do think there should be some measure for admissions to medical schools. If some minimum intellect is required, how do we know if a candidate has it?
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I guess that if you have a 3.7+ GPA, an MCAT > 86th percentile, and have done enough extracurricular activities to prove your devotion to medicine, that means you are probably smart enough.
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Have they made it through, though? Do you have any statistics on how many potentially excellent physicians haven’t made it through the gauntlet because of unreasonable demands, a lack of accommodations, and/or poor professors? How may have been “weeded out” by requirements that aren’t closely related to their potential competency as doctors.
He wasn’t hired as teach electives or upper division classes, and he wasn’t amenable to even discussing having his role changed. That alone is reason to let him go.
Whatever the standard, admission to medical school ought not depend on getting a good draw among OC Profs.
Aren’t there too many students who can meet those criteria since grades these days are inflated in many courses and on many campuses? I don’t know enough to know how much MCAT measures intellect or it is more about memorization.
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No and it’s irrelevant. Studying and training to be a physician involves the possibility of unreasonable demands, lack of accommodation and poor professors, attending physicians and mentors in both medical school and residency. How much coddling/support is appropriate to produce a competent physician? Should it be necessary when there are thousands who successfully run the gauntlet without it?
For decades (and currently) students took the requisite courses, the MCAT and gained acceptance to medical school. Were there students during that time who might have made excellent doctors? Probably. But clearly there were enough students (and then some) who met all the requirements to populate medical school classes. If we had a shortage of qualifying students applying to med school then perhaps the admissions process would require revision but that’s not the case.
Not every student who wants to be a physician will ultimately be one and not every student who wants to work on Wall Street or for NASA or Google or attend Yale law school and clerk for a Supreme Court Justice will get to do that either. That’s life.
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The gauntlet has gotten progressively more difficult over the years, but the final product doesn’t seem to have changed a bit.
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Prof. Jones losing his job over some of his students giving him bad reviews reminded me of a conversation I had with a physician friend that absolutely abhors online physician reviews. Many of the complaining students were premed students, right? They themselves might one day find themselves on the other end of career limiting (if not ending) bad reviews. What goes around comes around.
(There’s a petition circulating online that my friend asked me (and others) to sign asking for the ban of online physician reviews. I tried to copy it here but wasn’t allowed.)
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Where did you hear of this? I recall seeing a recent Reddit post by an aspiring medic asking whether they need to take A level math and respondents basically said that, outside of Cambridge, the absence of A level math will not sink an application to study medicine.
I believe @shawbridge was referring to premed students in UK unis, not about admissions to such schools.
For one, the large cut/weeding out needs to happen before medical school due to number of spots as well as the high cost of educating doctors. The intellect/academic piece needs to be determined before they are accepted, and all subjects that relate to the mcat material are used. I suppose it could be Physics, and frankly many premeds bail after calc-based physics, but O chem more directly relates to the med school curriculum components of biochem, pharmacology and others.
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