Good New for Med school

[indigoshuffle]

Some good news due to COVID is that most medical schools are taking online classes regardless of the institution providing them! Looks like portage learning might be feasible after all.

[eLearner]

Aren't medical schools giving students online classes now anyway? I know this was a thing for a little while due to COVID.

[LongRoad]

A few decades ago, a local metropolitan area was hiring the dregs for its police force. You knew that someone hired in the early 90s probably was trouble.

Now? If I learn that a doctor attended medical school virtually, I will not approach him/her for treatment. Coming from a family of nurses, I know that the best nurses became RNs back in the days of teaching hospitals and today with many community colleges. They had hands-on experience versus the theory that many of the BSN programs offered.

[eLearner]

A few decades ago, a local metropolitan area was hiring the dregs for its police force. You knew that someone hired in the early 90s probably was trouble.

Now? If I learn that a doctor attended medical school virtually, I will not approach him/her for treatment. Coming from a family of nurses, I know that the best nurses became RNs back in the days of teaching hospitals and today with many community colleges. They had hands-on experience versus the theory that many of the BSN programs offered.

That's awfully elitist to compare societal dregs to students taking online courses, especially right now with the COVID situation where for most there is no other choice.

With regard to your plan, it's not going to work. At this point and going forward, it's going to take a herculean effort to avoid Nurses and Doctors who haven't taken some of their education online. It's not even necessary anyway, since every Nurse and Doctor has to take and pass the same tests and get and pass the same level of hands-on training in order to be licensed. So you would just be doing all of this dodging at the risk of your own health. Doesn't make sense.

[Lacedonia4]

How would one know who studied what and where? When the patient is unconscious one is at their mercy in a hospital. Yes one can do all the homework when choosing a specialist in a normal situation, but when you are the patient rushed to hospital in an emergency situation, you are not in a position to check if nurse studied online or not. Just trust that the hospital did the weeding out through hiring process, the rest, just pray.

[rachel83az]

"What do you call someone who graduated at the bottom of medical school?" "Doctor."

A reminder that there always have been bad doctors, even with the insistence on no online classes at all. Has it helped? No, probably not really.

[indigoshuffle]

A few decades ago, a local metropolitan area was hiring the dregs for its police force. You knew that someone hired in the early 90s probably was trouble.

Now? If I learn that a doctor attended medical school virtually, I will not approach him/her for treatment. Coming from a family of nurses, I know that the best nurses became RNs back in the days of teaching hospitals and today with many community colleges. They had hands-on experience versus the theory that many of the BSN programs offered.

These are pre-requisite classes, not clinical.

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Aren't medical schools giving students online classes now anyway? I know this was a thing for a little while due to COVID.

the didactic portion is online, clinical is in person

[eLearner]

Yeah, for the clinical part there is no other way. Some seem to think legitimately registered and licensed online medical schools don't have the clinical part but that's a myth, they all do.

[indigoshuffle]

A few decades ago, a local metropolitan area was hiring the dregs for its police force. You knew that someone hired in the early 90s probably was trouble.

Now? If I learn that a doctor attended medical school virtually, I will not approach him/her for treatment. Coming from a family of nurses, I know that the best nurses became RNs back in the days of teaching hospitals and today with many community colleges. They had hands-on experience versus the theory that many of the BSN programs offered.

Ok, theres a lot to sort though here, and a lot of misunderstanding... so I'll try to be brief.

First of all, I'm talking about pre-requisite electives, not clinical practice. That's a huge distinction there. 

Second, I did my nursing RN license at the community college through a teaching hospital then did my BSN online with WGU. If I had to do it over, I would have completed the didactic portion online because I'm an independent learner and I don't need any professor to spoon feed me anything I can read for myself. In fact, I think many people on this forum are like me in that way. Many of us thrive in an online, independent learning environment and so do many doctors...


For example, Ben Carson thrived when he stopped going to lecture...

Carson entered the University of Michigan Medical School in 1973, and at first he struggled academically, doing so poorly on his first set of comprehensive exams that his faculty adviser recommended he drop out of medical school or take a reduced academic load and take longer to finish.[80][81] He continued with a regular academic load, and his grades improved to average in his first year of medical school. By his second year of medical school, Carson began to excel academically by seldom attending lectures and instead studying textbooks and lecture notes from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.[82] Carson graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School with an M.D. in 1977, and he was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.[70]

Third, medical education in the clinical setting (medical residencies) are paid for by taxpayers. Hospitals are not willing to pay because they're running a business. 
Nursing programs are in a position where they are trying to keep the cost of the degrees lower because if the cost goes higher, it would not be worth it to become an RN (financially speaking). RNs are the largest number of healthcare providers in the hospitals and they run the hospitals, not the doctors. 

The ANA, the NCSBN, hospitals, our communities, the military, are in desperate need of nurses (supposedly). So what some schools have done is move the didactic portion online (to save money and time) and create nursing residency programs via the hospitals. I think this is wise and it weeds out people who need to be spoon-fed.

Unlike medical residencies, these nurse residency programs cost up to $100,000 to train a nurse for 6 months. And even after that six months, some nurses need more training, which is fine. 
Look, it takes TIME to make good nurses, online or not. And even then, there are labor and staffing issues that can cause an expert nurse to make deadly mistakes. 

There are so many factors, and focusing on whether someone went to a lecture or read the book at home is not taking in the whole picture. People mainly need TIME to become competent nurses. There are far too many variables to say that online learning will make someone less competent than another. Some people are horrible psych nurses but excellent in the ER, some people are horrible at homecare but are phenomenal in hospice care. These are personality factors. Again... too many variables. I would advise against n=1 thinking.

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Aren't medical schools giving students online classes now anyway? I know this was a thing for a little while due to COVID.

Schools are currently taking the prerequisite courses, ie organic chem, gen bio, etc, online.

[eLearner]

Aren't medical schools giving students online classes now anyway? I know this was a thing for a little while due to COVID.

Schools are currently taking the prerequisite courses, ie organic chem, gen bio, etc, online.

I think this is okay. Just as long as things like surgical techniques remain in-person. If not, it's gonna be butcher time.