The future for medical students looks both promising and exciting. Although there will be many opportunities for medical students to explore various fields of medicine, they will face high stress levels, financial burden, and unprecedented competition for prestigious residencies. How will they get out of this? How will tomorrow’s medical students be different from past generations? Here’s a brief overview of what medical school applicants can expect and how their training will give them an advantage over previous graduates, in my opinion.
One of the main advantages is the training before applying to medical school. Many of the medical school admissions standards by which my generation (the baby boomers) and others were judged are no longer relevant. Soft sciences – as opposed to hard sciences – now have their place in premedical programs, particularly in psychology and sociology courses. At medical schools in the Philadelphia area, for example, calculus is only required one of the eight MD or DO granting institutions (Penn State).
The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) added a psychology-sociology (“psych-sosh”) section to its MCAT standardized admissions exam in 2015. The revised MCAT reflects the importance of learning to think and solve problems, with more questions requiring future doctors to use analytical skills rather than simply memorizing material. Prerequisite courses in the social sciences can also produce students who are both emotionally intelligent and clinically competent.
This means that in a survey of doctors trained in my era – those who graduated from college between 1955 and 1982 – the biggest unmet need was for “people skills”, and my peers wished they had taken more art, history , literature and music during their university studies. Nowadays, some of these subjects are essential if students want to win a place in medical school, even if they reserve the right to “fall asleep in (their) seats during lectures”. writing Acclaimed physician-author Chris Adrian, MD.
After decades of welcoming science enthusiasts, medical educators have finally placed more emphasis on the humanities in medicine. Medical students must be competent in the humanities to be able to converse intelligently with a heterogeneous health-conscious audience. Once accepted to medical school, students can increase their literary skills through narrative medicine programs, now offered in approximately 80% of medical schools. These programs aim to teach medical students sensitive interviewing and empathetic listening skills, combined with storytelling and writing skills to recognize their patients’ difficulties, as well as their own.
The AAMC also created an optional exam to assess the “situational judgment” of students applying to medical school. The professional preparation exam, formerly known as the AAMC Situational Judgment Test, consists of 30 hypothetical scenarios and 186 related questions that test the effectiveness of students’ remedies when faced with hypothetical situations encountered in the classroom and in practice. The appropriateness of students’ responses is an indicator of their readiness to enter medical school, as determined through eight core competencies such as service orientation, cultural competence, and teamwork.
Typical dilemmas presented to students include: (1) how to handle a classmate who violates a patient’s privacy on social media; (2) how to ensure respect for a patient’s cultural customs in case something unexpected happens after surgery; (3) how to seek help when the stress of an emergency medicine rotation begins to affect sleep and judgment; (4) how to address a speaker who is quick to dismiss multiple valid perspectives on a topic; and (5) how to handle a classmate who assumed that a deceased immigrant was “undocumented” or that a person’s stomach pains were fabricated because they were homeless.
Another similar test, conducted by Toronto-based Acuity Insights, is called Casper. This assessment evaluates aspects of students’ social intelligence and professionalism such as ethics, empathy, problem solving, and collaboration. The assessment offers admission assessments that give each applicant the opportunity to highlight their qualities beyond their grades and differentiate themselves from other applicants.
THE deletion Affirmative action admissions policies adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) last June have not deterred medical schools from working to select diverse students deemed necessary to reduce disparities health matter. Conduct holistic reviews of applicants and the search for unique personal characteristics are consistent with the SCOTUS decision and support diversity. Additionally, some medical schools have instituted community outreach and “pipeline” programs to attract a more diverse applicant pool. The University of California Davis School of Medicine has maintained a remarkably diverse class of students by evaluating their Socioeconomic status rather than their race and ethnicity (affirmative action admissions have been banned at California public colleges since 1996). A diverse workforce has been shown to improve Patient results And increase confidence in the doctor-patient relationship. Additionally, teaching diversity, equity, and inclusion on medical school campuses fosters a sense of belonging among staff, faculty, and the patients they serve.
Tomorrow’s medical students will be very different from their predecessors, not only because of their premedical training and selective selection for admission, but also because of changes in medical teaching methods, constant technological advances evolution and the ever-changing healthcare landscape.
With the rise of digital health technologies such as telemedicine, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, future medical students will be better equipped technologically. They will be trained to use advanced tools to diagnose, treat and communicate with patients. Additionally, enhancements to virtual and augmented reality will provide students with access to cutting-edge learning tools. This will make their education more interactive and hands-on, potentially facilitating better understanding and retention of knowledge.
AI, in particular, holds great promise for medical students, training them to operate at a higher cognitive level and reducing the time required to collect data and information from multiple sources. According to a Harvard Medical School educator Bernard Chang, MD, MMSc, “Students should be able to advance further in the progression of development as a journalist, interpreter, manager and educator earlier in their training, reaching functional levels at which their cognitive talents will be most valuable in an environment AI-assisted clinic.”
Future medical students will increasingly learn how to work and lead multidisciplinary teams. As the health care system shifts its focus from treatment to prevention, medical students will pay greater attention to the social determinants of health and emphasize preventative care.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the importance of adaptability in healthcare. Having lived through the pandemic, medical students will demonstrate resilience and flexibility in the face of changes in the health care environment, including changes in how medicine is practiced and how health systems reach their objectives. The vagaries of private equity and the medical industry will become second nature to them. In fact, with the rise of healthcare startups and new medical businesses, future medical students will learn entrepreneurial skills to innovate and improve the healthcare system. In fact, approximately 80 medical schools in the United States offer combined MD/MBA program.
Clearly, tomorrow’s medical students will be unlike any cohort of doctors of my time.
Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, is a member of the editorial board of the American Association for Physician Leadership, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia, and a former member of Doximity. He is the author of Every story counts: exploring contemporary practice through narrative medicine.
