And extend the prerequisite classes to:
Biochemistry II + lab component
Differential equations I
Any upper year humanities class
And include the concepts covered in these classes on the MCAT.

How much more competent would doctors become in a generation or two? It was reported that when medical school stopped accepting high-school students and started accepting students with degrees only, malpractice and incompetence dropped by a whopping 42% in 15 years. How much would they drop by once medical schools start using the criteria above to accept only phD holders?
So? That will truly then weed out those who want to become doctors to help people.

eri
A PhD takes 8-12 years of college to earn and requires doing original, publishable research. That's not a skill that doctors need to have, and it would mostly be a waste of their time - med school and residency comes to another 7-12 years on top of a PhD.

Rɑinbow Mθθ
That's so ridiculous. The Bachelor's requirement is just as ridiculous. A PhD is for those going into research. There are already MD/PhD programs so that wouldn't even make any sense! Do you want ANY doctors in the future at all? Making a PhD a requirement will do the exact opposite. Do you think money grows on trees? You want them to be more competant? Truly weed out applicants? That's your argument? It's a weak one at best. You need to do some reasearch on this topic and educate yourself before spouting out this garbage.The degree doesn't have as much to do with it, it's about age. Maturity and competance comes with age. Cite your sources please, where was that 'fact' reported?

"Differential equations I
Any upper year humanities class
And include the concepts covered in these classes on the MCAT." - Why? What will that achieve? Were you not complaining earlier about Johns Hopkins requiring differential equations? Make up your mind child.

The requirements are ridiculous enough as they are. There is no need to add more to undergraduate education and pre-requisites for med school such as worthless humanities classes. Add anymore and I'll be done. I don't have the money to jump through more hoops for something that is almost impossible to get.

Aya
I think that would be kind of pointless. Very few people want to do something so badly that they would spend almost 20 years just learning how to do it. Besides, what kind of Ph.D. would you propose that they get before entering medical school? Becoming a doctor is the medical equivalent of a Ph.D. You would basically be requiring doctors to have two Ph.D.s before being allowed to work. I think this is unreasonable and not terribly feasible either. A better approach would be for medical schools to have more stringent requirements, such as only accepting students who graduate in the top 5% of their classes with strong backgrounds in biology (and other fields relevant to medicine) and making it tougher for students to stay in the program once they entered. It would also be nice to doctors to learn more about, say, listening to their patients and treating all patients like human beings who deserve respect and attention. I think things like that would go a lot farther towards improving medicine than forcing potential doctors to stay in school until it's almost time for them to retire.

What do you think? Answer below!

Orignal From: Tips: What if medical schools start only accepting people who have earned phD's?

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