Tag Archives: medical school

Heather Mac Donald on Medicine

The outstanding public intellectual, Heather Mac Donald has written a penetrating analysis of the current state of medical education, practice criteria, and organizational structure. Appropriately called the Corruption of Medicine, it details the horrible pit the profession has thrown itself into. Gone is first do no harm. In its place is the patient be damned…


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On the Practice of Medicine

As a student, trainee, educator, scientist, practitioner, and occasionally as a patient, I have observed medicine as an insider for close to two-thirds of a century. While the power of medical technology has grown exponentially over this span, the general principles of medical practice remain the same. My subject is the interplay between these two…


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Income of Men and Women in the Life Sciences

A paper published in this month’s issue of Academic Medicine is getting a lot of attention. Well, a lot for a paper published in a journal which rarely gets a glance from anyone not immersed in the minutia of medical education. Appearing under the section Gender Studies, Activities, Productivity, and Compensation of Men and Women…


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Physicians Working Less Hours

The leaders of American medicine (I had to start this piece with something – there are no leaders of American medicine – we’re too balkanized) are forever issuing pronouncements of how many doctors we should have. We never have the right number, we oscillate from too many or not enough. They usually ignore how many…


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Racing Odysseus – Nothing New Under the Sun

Racing Odysseus is a book by Roger H Martin. Four years ago Martin took a sabbatical from his job as president of Randolph-Macon College to enroll as a freshman at St John’s College in Annapolis, MD. He was not really a student – he didn’t participate in seminar discussions and he only stayed for a…


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Medical Student Burnout and the Challenge to Patient Care

The above is the title of an article in the New York Times. It depicts the emotional trauma endured by its author during her four years in medical school. While her suffering is depicted at length the reason for it is not. It reads as if she were unprepared for the Spanish Inquisition which as…


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