Medical schools now adding "fluff"

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).

This is an op ed recently in the Wall Street Journal by an MD. Evidently, some medical schools are now adding social justice topics in place of teaching medicine. This created a firestorm on social media. Unfortunately, unless you subscribe the WSJ, you can't read the whole article (although I did read it on my iphone). Here's the link:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-by-my-pronouns-11568325291#comments_sector

https://www.wsj.com/articles/corrupting-medical-education-11568578153

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Specializes in Emergency medicine.

med schools include education on cultural awareness, ethics, etc. It’s on our boards. As curriculums evolve with the times it would not be unusual to see “social justice,” which is really a branch of ethics, named as a topic. 99% of med school is always going to be medical science. The other stuff is tacked on. I can’t read the articles but characterizing this stuff as “replacing teaching medicine” or even calling it fluff seems pretty extreme. I guarantee the same publication has ran stories about poorer outcomes in pregnancy for African American women in the US. You want doctors who are well versed in societal ills and know how to practice good medicine in a disparate society? Me too.

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That's better than BS like Jean Watson theories any day. At least it's usable. Nursing school teaches "cultural competency" in a manner that is just thinly veiled stereotypes and inherent biases. Hopefully, they are teaching this in a way that will make providers face their biases and improve care across the socio-economic and racial spectrums.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
6 hours ago, TuxnadoDO said:

med schools include education on cultural awareness, ethics, etc. It’s on our boards. As curriculums evolve with the times it would not be unusual to see “social justice,” which is really a branch of ethics, named as a topic. 99% of med school is always going to be medical science. The other stuff is tacked on. I can’t read the articles but characterizing this stuff as “replacing teaching medicine” or even calling it fluff seems pretty extreme. I guarantee the same publication has ran stories about poorer outcomes in pregnancy for African American women in the US. You want doctors who are well versed in societal ills and know how to practice good medicine in a disparate society? Me too.

I don't know why you are commenting on an article you didn't read. The point of the article is that the amount of "fluff" in med school curriculums is increasing at the expense of clinical education. While I agree that there should be some teaching on ethics, social determinants of health, etc., judging from some of what I read on KevinMD, there is a legitimate concern over too much "social justice" type crap replacing actual medical education.

Given the constant complaining on this forum about nursing schools teaching some of this, I posted this article to let nurses know that it is not unique to nursing school.

4 hours ago, CampyCamp said:

That's better than BS like Jean Watson theories any day. At least it's usable. Nursing school teaches "cultural competency" in a manner that is just thinly veiled stereotypes and inherent biases. Hopefully, they are teaching this in a way that will make providers face their biases and improve care across the socio-economic and racial spectrums.

How do you know it's better? Have you been to med school? Did you read the article? In addition, you are only speaking of your own school experience. I feel my nursing school did a good job in these areas.

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Specializes in Emergency medicine.

lol, look up 10 med school curriculums and you’ll see how much “fluff” is there.

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1. Adding inflammatory title toward medical education

2. Posts links to an opinion piece that requires a subscription most don’t want to spend the money on

3. Counter argument provided to OP

4. OP chastises those for not reading article that we can’t even access

lol

1 hour ago, TuxnadoDO said:

lol, look up 10 med school curriculums and you’ll see how much “fluff” is there.

I’m not a SJW but I don’t see the harm in topics that are big in the radar now. So I agree with you

nursing theory by outdated theologians that never had an impact on medicine? Junk

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).
20 hours ago, TuxnadoDO said:

lol, look up 10 med school curriculums and you’ll see how much “fluff” is there.

I simply posted an opinion piece by a medical school educator. My purpose in doing was because so many on this forum complain about nursing schools having courses that are considered "fluff" and then they go on about how PA school and med school don't have any "fluff."

What irks me about many doctors is the attitude that they are perfect, and a real resistance to change or criticism. You are just reflexively defending the status quo, as is stereotypical. I'm assuming you are a DO and not in school now, so how do you know what is going on in schools? And you went to DO school, not med school. Without even reading the article, you just assume it is wrong and everything in med school is just perfect.

Personally, I don't consider ethics and other classes that teach about the structure of the healthcare system, etc. to be fluff, but I don't want that to come at the expense of clinical instruction.

And I wouldn't evaluate all med schools by just the top 10. I went to Johns Hopkins and am very happy with my education. Evidently, a lot of nurses here are not happy with their education.

I agree that I saw no point to the nursing theory material.

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Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).

What is wrong with nurses? The amount of self-hatred I see on this forum is incredible. Post after post about how nursing sucks, nursing schools suck, PA school is better than NP school, another respondent here on this thread (mod edit) says cultural competency classes are worthless, etc. Yet, when I post that med schools may have the same issue, everyone jumps on me? (mod edit)

I put a catchy title on to get attention. That's what the media does. That's what titles are supposed to do.

I said that not everyone would be able to read the article unless they had a subscription, but I also said I did read one of them on my iPhone through Apple News, as a hint that other people could do so, too. At least I read one. And there are people who subscribe the WSJ, so I was hoping one of them could share more info with the rest of us. The WSJ is hardly an obscure publication. In addition, many schools would have subscriptions, and there are a lot of students and instructors on this forum.

There was no counter argument provided by anyone who actually read the article. Yes, I am going to chastise people that want to provide a "counter argument" to something they haven't even read. You can't provide a counter argument unless you know the actual argument.

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59 minutes ago, FullGlass said:

I simply posted an opinion piece by a medical school educator. My purpose in doing was because so many on this forum complain about nursing schools having courses that are considered "fluff" and then they go on about how PA school and med school don't have any "fluff."

What irks me about many doctors is the attitude that they are perfect, and a real resistance to change or criticism. You are just reflexively defending the status quo, as is stereotypical. I'm assuming you are a DO and not in school now, so how do you know what is going on in schools? And you went to DO school, not med school. Without even reading the article, you just assume it is wrong and everything in med school is just perfect.

Personally, I don't consider ethics and other classes that teach about the structure of the healthcare system, etc. to be fluff, but I don't want that to come at the expense of clinical instruction.

And I wouldn't evaluate all med schools by just the top 10. I went to Johns Hopkins and am very happy with my education. Evidently, a lot of nurses here are not happy with their education.

I agree that I saw no point to the nursing theory material.

You do know DO school is med school right? DO learn the same as MD and can practice In all specialties. It’s essentially the same thing.

why don’t you copy paste the article for us if you want us to read it so badly.

tuxDO as in all his or her other posts has not been inflammatory at all. you just don’t like doctors and it shows all over.

the difference is the fluff is added on top of med school curriculum. It doesn’t replace the already limited amount of actual science in many NP schools. Med school is so comprehensive you can actually have time to add in some things without the expensive of education on science and medicine. NP school is already abbreviated too much.

source- any school curriculum listed online

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
5 minutes ago, kudzui said:

why don’t you copy paste the article for us if you want us to read it so badly.

That would be a copyright issue and violation of AN TOS.

OP, there is more to medicine than just science. Yes, I said that. Social aspects definitely affect the care of patients from different backgrounds. Why shouldn't education on such a topic be included?

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Note posts removed/edited.

Since this discussion has been difficult due to the fact members have issues reading the original Article in the OP AND because the discussion has deteriorated into an unprofessional, one-on-one with personal attacks, Admins are closing this topic.

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