While you’re preparing to become a physician, make sure your medical training is preparing you. You invest so much time preparing for medical school, it’s important to consider how well medical school is preparing you. Though many aspects of being a doctor can only be learned on the job, medical training would do well to place a bigger emphasis on the how rather than the what—namely, the critical thinking, interpersonal, and ethical skills physicians will utilize throughout their entire career. Changing the way we evaluate doctors Every ten years, a physician is required to take one of these multiple choice exams to become recertified. While this might be effective for base knowledge, it’s ability to qualify a physician is being called into question. For example, many answer choices rely on a student’s ability to memorize specific statistic percentages or outdated practices, rather than applying critical thinking to a given scenario. It’s been suggested, therefore, that patient surveys, stimulated assessments, or essay-style exams might be a more productive way to measure the effectiveness of a physician throughout their career. Adding ethics to the medical training curriculum Even if medical students feel prepared for the job from an academic standpoint, it’s much harder to simulate certain ethical dilemmas that may arise. Much more focus is placed on intellectual decision-making rather than having to consider the big picture and rights of a patient. What’s more, medical students are encouraged to take a back seat to senior physicians and nurses in an operating room rather than speaking up and offering an alternative perspective. In a recent study, medical students were asked to participate in simulation-based exercises, wearing POV glasses to assess how different perspectives affect ethical dilemmas. Perhaps, with more ethical medical training, students would be more likely to speak up or simply recognize misconduct in the first place, and they would also be able to better advocate for their own patients down the road. Learning how to treat patients on a personal level With the onset of technology, patients are feeling increasingly like their patient-physician relationships are impersonal. Despite such concerns, hospitals seem to value employees who are tech-savvy over those with good bedside manners. As a result, that art of medicine has been reduced to a robotic science, as physicians focus more on computer screens than their patients. Thankfully, medical schools are recognizing the need to make interpersonal skills a part of their curricula. Today, humanities classes are required in which standardized patients come in for simulated sessions and provide feedback for medical students. Learn more about what medical schools are doing now that they weren’t 20 years ago. Source
