Rocket docs

                       

Confession:  I was a 3 year MD (University of Texas Medical Branch 1979)

 

"In response to complaints that medical education costs too much, takes too long, teaches the wrong things, and distorts the physician workforce, schools are reconfiguring themselves in a variety of ways -- with revamped curriculums, new teaching styles, individually shaped courses of study, and shortened study periods.

 

A handful of medical schools, notably Mercer University in Georgia, University of California at Davis, and Texas Tech, are allowing students to complete their course of study in 3 years instead of the traditional 4, with the expectation that they will go into primary care specialties...

OHSU students are finishing the first year of the school's "competency-based" course of study, which teaches them how to search out data and use information systems to care for individual patients and populations. Once they master certain milestones of learning, they advance to the next level. That means some students will complete medical school in less than 4 years."

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MedicalEducation/51339

See also:  But today, says Mangrulkar, the 2-plus-2 model doesn't work. For one thing, there's too much medical science for anyone to learn in 2 years – and most information can be quickly accessed from a smartphone or tablet. At the same time, medicine is constantly in flux. What Michigan and many other schools are trying to do instead is prepare doctors for the inevitable changes they'll see over their practice lives...

"We shouldn't even try to predict what that system's going to be like," he says. "Which means we need to give students the tools to be adaptable, to be resilient, to problem solve, push through some things, accept some things, but change other things."

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MedicalEducation/50952