Who should we take in medical school? What should be the criteria? Who will be a good doctor?

There are many serious inequities in our society, and they tend to build upon one another. People with more advantages have more opportunities to do well themselves, and those with fewer have less. Those advantages (or, conversely, disadvantages) include wealth, white race, male  gender, suburban or urban (but not poor areas) location, and education. All these feed one another. For example, coming from a well-to-do family and being white dramatically increase the odds of success in a chosen field. Even if there were no discrimination against people based on race and color (and this is a long way from being true), there is still the fact that people of color are grossly over-represented in low-income communities and families. This is a clear example of structural racism, so that effective discrimination based on class disproportionately falls on people of color.

An important manifestation of this exists in healthcare, and in particular the production of healthcare professionals (but also in other professional fields). In medicine specifically, we have a physician workforce that does not reflect the population of the US in terms of class (or family income), race, gender (although this is the area in which the greatest progress has been and continues to be made), geographic location (rural vs. urban), and specialty choice. Our doctors overwhelmingly are from upper-middle-class backgrounds, are white, are from suburban (or well-to-do urban) communities, and largely male. They practice in urban and suburban areas in even greater proportion than they come from them, in part because they also practice in specialties and subspecialties that cannot survive in smaller communities, rather than in family medicine and other primary care specialties that are in shortage. This exacerbates the other inequities by making healthcare something that is less accessible to many Americans based on geography (where are the doctors located?) and culture, as well as because of cost, the absence of a universal affordable healthcare system being an almost uniquely American phenomenon.

Not having a medical workforce that looks like America, or practicing in the areas and specialties where there is most need, goes beyond the admissions process to medical school. It is impacted by the curriculum (both formal and informal, or “hidden”) in medical school, by role models and mentors, and very much by the potential income from practice. The systemic characteristics of society greatly influence who is considered a “good” candidate for medical school, and even who applies. These are considerations addressed in a recent blog post on LinkedIn®, a professional networking site, by Dr. Heidi Chumley, dean of the Ross University School of Medicine (RUSM). Dr. Chumley focuses on the challenges faced by students from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine (URiM), and in particular on the emphasis on performance on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) for deciding who gets into medical school, since URiM students perform less well on that test. She notes that what seems like a small difference in scores makes a significant difference in admission: “There remains an unexplained gap in average MCAT scores between White (503.1), Black (494.9), and LatinX (497.1) test-takers. This gap matters as 29% of applicants with a score of 502-505 are accepted compared to 10% with a score of 494-49.”

Dr. Chumley also address two other critical points. First, that the lower MCAT scores are likely tied to many of the social and educational disadvantages faced by URiM students, thus reflecting, and compounding, the other factors that these students have to overcome. Second, that efforts implemented by many medical schools (and endorsed by the Association of American Medical Colleges, AAMC) to have a more “holistic” admissions process mostly changes the selection of which high-scoring students are admitted. Yes, it is great that students who have a social conscience and have done volunteer work in the US and abroad are selected over those who are selfish and not so involved, but this rubric, as she points out, ignores the fact that many lower-income (and URiM) students need to work at paying jobs to support themselves (and often their families), and devalues such employment in comparison to the voluntarism that is more accessible to those from privileged backgrounds.

Added to this is the financial component of the cost of medical school itself, which, in the US and in the US (and Canadian) serving Caribbean medical schools (of which Ross is one of the largest and most prominent), is staggering. Students typically graduate from medical schools with debt loads of $250,000 or more. In addition to being outrageous to start with, add the fact that compound and accrued interest makes the total to be repaid much higher, and this encourages students to choose higher-paid specialties even when that is not where the greatest need is (you may make, over a lifetime, $7M more practicing as, say, an anesthesiologist compared to a primary care doctor) or even where the student’s personal interest lies.

Dr. Chumley describes some of the efforts to increase access for URiM students at RUSM, and they are indeed impressive. They include “pipeline” relationships with HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) and HSIs (Hispanic-Serving Institutions) and  re-thinking what criteria for admission are essential, valuing the life experience (including work experience) of applicants and putting less emphasis on the absolute score students get on the MCATs. As she points out, the MCAT predicts performance on similar multiple-choice tests of knowledge including most “pre-clinical” tests in medical school, and the licensing exam, the USMLE (particularly Part I, which covers basic science). It definitely does not predict performance as a good or excellent clinician. Also, while there are significant differences in the first-time pass rates on USMLE in those who score “over-500” (> 95%) and “just under 500” (> 80%) groups on the MCAT, the medical school curriculum should be addressing those differences.

The two points I would like to emphasize are the criteria for who is likely to become a good doctor (and thus should preferentially be admitted to medical school) and the enormous cost burden on medical students that obviously falls hardest on those with the least wealth. As I have said before (The high cost of medical education: Who should be trained to become doctors?, Dec 10, 2019; Free tuition in medical school is only one step toward producing the doctors America needs, Aug 26, 2018), those who should be given the opportunity to become doctors (ie., be admitted to medical school) should be those most likely to make a positive difference in the health of our population. This includes a sense of community over self, a willingness to serve where needed, and interest in (preferably commitment to) practicing the specialties most in need in the areas most in need of them. Since URiM doctors are more likely to practice with patients from similar backgrounds (and those patients are often more comfortable seeing them), and a comparable correlation exists with those from rural backgrounds, these characteristics should be very important criteria. As should coming from a family with lower than average wealth and income, which requires addressing the second point. Higher income does correlate with better education and higher MCAT scores, and maybe higher scores on basic science tests in medical school (which are very like undergraduate science tests) and USMLE Part I scores, but not (and almost inversely) with practicing the specialties most needed and caring for the people most in need. So this should at best be a neutral, not positive, criterion.

And the money is a big one. You can admit a student from a low-income family who will be a great doctor, but they should not have to go into absolutely crushing debt and certainly not to enter the highest-income specialties to pay it off. This can partially be addressed by medical schools offering scholarships and states and localities offering loan-repayment programs, but it would be most effective if the federal government could subsidize the cost to make it far lower, and in conjunction with requirements that schools (state or private, stateside or Caribbean) to produce the physicians America needs.

Of course, as well, and even more important for all our people, to have a free or very low cost universal health system.

 

Disclosure: Dr. Chumley and I have known each other for many years and previously worked together.

Creating more family doctors: should we shorten medical school? How?

At the recently-completed Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Conference on Medical Student Education, held in San Antonio, one of the big areas of discussion was the shortening of the medical school experience to 3 years for students planning to enter family medicine. Steven Berk, Dean of the Texas Tech University School of Medicine, and Betsy Goebel Jones from the Department of Family Medicine, described the Lubbock medical school’s recently-instituted program in a plenary presentation, and a later seminar featured presenters from several other schools which have instituted or are planning such tracks, including the Savannah campus of Mercer University School of Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin, as well as Texas Tech. The goal of such tracks is to increase the number of students choosing to enter family medicine by eliminating one year of school, and thus tuition; these schools believe that this financial incentive at least helps a little to offset the lower income that accrues to family physicians compared to other specialists. To the extent that these students then enter family medicine residencies at those same schools, it also decreases uncertainty for both the student and the program.

The most direct forebears of these programs were in the 1990s, at some of the same schools. They offered an “accelerated track” for family medicine, in which students began their first year of FM residency while completing their final year of medical school, getting the MD degree after that year. While initially approved by the American Board of Family Medicine as a pilot, these programs were closed when the decision was made by the body that accredits residencies that one could not get credit for residency training until after receiving the MD degree. This latest effort gets around this by granting the MD degree after 3 years, mainly by compressing the final year of medical school; in most schools the fourth year is already largely used for electives.

Not all accelerated MD programs are about increasing the number of primary care, or certainly family medicine, physicians. A program at the NYU School of Medicine, which remains one of the few US medical schools to not even have a Family Medicine department, was featured in the New York Times "N.Y.U. and Other Medical Schools Offer Shorter Course in Training, for Less Tuition" by Anemona Harticollis, December 24, 2012. While the Texas Tech and Mercer-Savannah programs are also mentioned, NYU’s program is clearly not about producing more of the primary care physicians that the US needs, as this is not something NYU seems to care about at all. As of now all of these programs are “tracks”, rather than for all students; they recruit “high-performing” students who can finish the traditional curriculum in a shorter time.

Interestingly, these current programs do not focus on shortening the amount of time or changing the content of the first two years of medical school, the “basic science” years. This struck me as odd, because when I went to medical school (Loyola-Stritch) in the mid-1970s, it was precisely this component that was shortened (to 12 months, with 2 full years of clinical training). Loyola was far from the only school to do so during that period; my current school, the University of Kansas and many others did so; according to an article by Walling and Merando in Academic Medicine[1] “…By 1973, 27% of U.S. schools offered compressed three year curricula.”  For most, this was not a “track” but was the curriculum for all students. The primary method of shortening the curriculum was abbreviating the time spent in basic science, although the amount varied (at KU it was 15 months). It is thus, to me, surprising that in the current efforts to decrease the length of training very little attention has been paid to shortening the basic sciences. Walling and Merando note that “Although educational outcomes were very similar for three-year and four-year curricula, most schools subsequently reinstated the fourth year to provide students with a broader clinical experience.” I don’t completely buy that; at least at Loyola, the clinical experience was not shortened during its 3-year curriculum. It surprised me in talking to people at the conference that so few even knew about these “experiments” from the 1970s.

My guess is that the current efforts focus on reducing the 4^th year rather than the first two years because of politics. No one “owns” the 4^th year, but the first two years are “owned” by the basic sciences in most medical schools, and by a strong advocacy constituency in the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME) which offers the US Medical Licensing Examinations (USMLE) and other groups. They have strongly resisted efforts to decrease the time spent on basic science teaching in medical schools individually, as well as nationally. An effort by the NBME to combine the 3 “steps” of the USMLE into two was seen as “elimination of Step 1” and generated huge opposition from the basic science community; the change has been put on hold for several years.

While the need for students to pass “Step 1” is often used as the ultimate reason to not cut back biologic science curricular time, the fact is that students can pass this test with significantly pared-down content. Hopefully, however, there is a better reason to teach basic sciences. That would be that learning the concepts that are important for everyone training to be a doctor to know rather than forcing the memorization of details that are irrelevant, can be looked up, or are likely to change regularly. It means both subjecting the content of curriculum to the this test of relevance, and increasing the breadth of disciplines included as “basic” to include social sciences such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, epidemiology. The teaching -- and testing -- of all this material should focus on understanding concepts, solving problems, and knowing where to look up detailed facts, rather than memorization.

We do need more primary care doctors, and more family physicians to meet the health needs of the American people. We need to do everything possible to make this happen, and addressing financial incentives is a big part of it. Another plenary presentation at the meeting from STFM President Jerry Kruse addressed the successful efforts in Canada to increase the number of primary care doctors (in that country, all family physicians); the key element is decreasing the ratio between primary care and specialist income, and the effective ratio is between 80-85%. There are also good arguments for decreasing the cost of medical education, and perhaps shortening medical school is one method of doing so, especially if it can be done without sacrificing important training; it certainly needs to be relevant training.

But these efforts – to increase the primary care workforce and to consider the appropriate length of medical education – are different. They may complement each other, or may not. The strategies that we employ should be based on their effectiveness at achieving our goals, and for that to happen we need to be clear on what those goals are.  Piecemeal approaches may ultimately work, but they are not the most efficient ways of approaching the problem.

Of course, in terms of health insurance reform, piecemeal is the way we have chosen to go rather than a comprehensive national health program such as Medicare for All; why would we expect a more rational approach to improving medical education?

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[1] Walling A, Merando A, “The Fourth Year of Medical Education: A Literature Review”, Acad Med  November 2010  85(11): 1698-1704.