This course was very.......unusual, to say the least. One of the first things we were taught is that the medical boards exist less to "test knowledge" and more to "weed-out" medical students. The purpose behind this, we were told, was because of the profound disparity between the number of medical school graduates every year and the significantly lower number of available residency slots. It is for this reason that the boards are deliberately difficult and obscure - they are an effort to trip up the test-taker. Additionally, we were told that the boards are more challenging for those persons who have greater clinical experience. As someone who has 18 years of military medicine under his belt, I would agree with this latter statement!
All of this started me thinking: in what shape is medical education, and the industry of medicine itself, if we find ourselves having to stoop to such base measures simply to make doctors? Over and over I have heard that there is a drought of physicians. Yet, we create hurdles, a grinding gauntlet of the mind, making the education of new physicians unnecessarily difficult. This, in turn, leads to a sense of elitism and thus robs eager young students of any altruism they may have had when they began this journey.
Medical school should be difficult. The responsibilities a physician faces are great as daily life and death decisions are made. To my perception, though, as one already two years into this process, there are efforts both at the level of the schools and on a national level, to make this procedure more arduous than it need be. The modern medical boards reflect this.
Some may read this and say, "Yes, but most students pass their boards on their first attempt. You're just saying this because you're angry." God bless those who have so passed! I admit that the boards have been very rough for me - more so than I ever anticipated. It is because of this that I have had the opportunity, more so than most medical students perhaps, to focus not only on the boards but on the purpose of the boards. Testing is a necessary evil. But this "thinning of the herd" simply because our system is broken is a travesty that limits the number of available quality physicians. In the end, the ones who pay the price are the patients.
Regardless, the boards are here to stay - at least for now. I am going to give this third attempt my best effort. Perhaps, one day, there will be a better more patient-centric system in place. Until then, we try our best to work with what we have while trying to bring positive change.
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