(12-18-2017 01:50 PM)Chipdip2 Wrote: (12-18-2017 10:25 AM)eich41 Wrote: (12-18-2017 12:17 AM)Chipdip2 Wrote: (12-17-2017 08:57 PM)GullLake Wrote: (12-17-2017 08:23 PM)broncofan1 Wrote: CMU's med school has a different - and needed - focus. They focus on rural health, something WMU will never do because of our research agenda, donors, and location. What they do up there is needed. It's very different from what we do. You will see our future doctors in the largest research hospitals in the world. Theirs will be specialized into rural areas throughout the country. I'm not bashing them for this, just pointing out the difference. Rural health has long been ignored by our education system.
You raise good points.
However, despite the emphasis, there is nothing that requires CMU med school graduates to practice in rural areas. They are just as free to work in suburban/urban settings, or leave the State entirely, as graduates of any other school.
There is no reason to believe that CMU med school graduates will help address the rural health care problem any more than current graduates from UM, MSU and WSU. Its med school is a "Me too!" duplication and probably won't survive, as previous posters have pointed out.
Frankly, with MSU being the land grant institution with an extension service, you would think it would be the one placing emphasis on rural care.
And Western’s focus is supposedly on training general practitioners. Upon graduation any of them can work in an urban or rural setting, or go 4 more years and specialize.........which is why we have so few GPs and so many specialist $$
Somebody has no idea how medical school works...
Well genius, both of my kids have “Dr.” in front of their name so I’m guessing I know a little about it.
LOL, your son is a damn dentist, it's slightly different for MD/DO. Keep talking you're just proving my point.
Here's how you become a Doctor genius:
You go to medical school for four years, at that point you go through the residency matching program at which time you choose what field of medicine you'd like to practice. Depending on what you choose to go into, the residency will last anywhere from 3-5 years depending on the specialty chosen. If you want to specialize further (for instance be a fertility doctor, or be a pediatric neurologist rather than an OB/GYN or Neurologist, respectively) then you must apply and be accepted to a fellowship which can be another 2-5 years. Nobody is allowed to start practicing medicine just because you graduated from Medical School as you seem to think is the case.
There are a limited number of residency programs in the United States, and it's highly competitive. Med Students have to take into account a variety of issues when making their decision. Factors such as work/life balance, interest in the area, ability to secure a residency, salary, liability when an attending, etc. Some areas are easier to get a residency in than others. Everyone wants to go into dermatology because there is no call, rarely is it life or death, you work 4 days a week 9-5, and it pays really well. That makes a derm residency one of the hardest to obtain. Also keep in mind that the actual residency across disciplines can be night and day. An OB/GYN or General Surgery residency is going to be light years harder than Pediatrics.
As to our shortage of general practitioners, it's pretty much a product of the cost/benefit analysis of becoming a physician. Medical school runs about $250k+ these days and that's not including any undergrad debt. You also have an additional 7-10 years of lost wages above and beyond most people's Bachelor degree. New docs don't start making any money until they're 30+ and they start off a quarter mil or more in debt. That's not a bad proposition if you can make $200k+, but you're not going to make that in family practice. While most physicians aren't just in it for the money, the reality is that it simply makes little financial sense to go through the work and sacrifice of medical school and residency, only to turn around and find yourself with student loan debt that is twice your salary. Add to that, most people in medical school are type A, highly competitive, and many of them view general practice as the "low rung on the ladder". Many of them prefer to go after more difficult specialties instead.
The real problem with the shortage isn't a lack of medical schools, it's a lack of residencies. Until they expand those opportunities, we aren't going to create anymore physicians with 10,000 medical schools than we do with the medical schools we have now (because you can't practice medicine without going through a residency program). The funding for residency programs is pretty much solely from medicaid/care, so who knows if or when those programs will expand. Until they do all the additional medical school programs are doing is making the residency programs more competitive, which should increase the quality of physicians but it won't help the quantity.