Good New for Med school

[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.

---

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.