The USA trains its physicians differently from every other Western country I know. Everyone (with rare exceptions) who goes to medical school first must get a four-year undergraduate college degree in something. There are no such degrees in medicine, although the overwhelming majority of students going on to medical school major in one of the sciences, such as chemistry, biochemistry, and biology. If they don’t major in a science, they generally must take two years of chemistry (which typically includes organic and biochemistry), a year of biology, and a year each of physics and mathematics. Looking at that list of prerequisites it’s easy to see why most just major in a science. Such students are “pre-meds,” and some colleges actually offer a major in pre-med, something I think is a terrible idea because its not really a thing.
Many people recall from their college years the awful reputation, occasionally deserved, pre-meds have for being cutthroat competitors and generally uninteresting persons because they are so focused on getting into medical school above all else. It can be a difficult subculture to be in among college students. Can or should we do anything to change that? After all, a good share of the criticism leveled against unfeeling physicians with poor interpersonal skills has been linked to how we are trained. Would restructuring the premedical years in college help make us more rounded and empathetic humans? A recent editorial in Scientific American advocates changing things.
It’s a good question, although I should say the author to some extent conflates the Flexner Report with premedical education. That report is now over a century old, and was a survey of American medical schools. It documented how terrible the scientific training of medical students was at the time and led to a revolution in how medical education is done, demanding exposure to the sciences. But it applied to medical schools, not colleges. Still, I think it is time to think about how we teach future physicians at the first step, before they get to medical school.
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