I haven’t written about offshore medical schools since this post back in January, but yesterday I received communications from two graduates of those schools which moved me. Both are edited for length and clarity.
This was an email. I read your article on Physician’s Weekly about unmatched MDs. I am a bit down and looking for advice. I graduated from a Caribbean Med school. I have failed attempts and many gaps. Academically I dug myself into a deep dark hole, but my desire to practice medicine kept me going. I recently took Step 3 and just received my scored (failed by 2 points). I do not know anyone in medicine that can help me get a residency. I know I will be a great physician. I am just a horrible test taker.
I didn't apply for the match since I was told that I needed to pass Step 3 to even try to match which would still be almost impossible even with a good score. I know many people who have not matched and have just given up on it. I have so much debt and no way of paying for it. What do you suggest I do? A friend thinks I should just take it again and apply, but I no longer have the funds especially since my chances are so low. I wish there was something more for me.
That was the headline on the website BGR [“a leading online destination for news and commentary focused on the mobile and consumer electronics markets”].
Engineers working with the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) claim it can cut skin and tissue with more precision than a surgeon.
A paper they presented last month at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems featured a video supposedly proving the point.
STAR works “by visually tracking both its intended cutting path and its cutting tool and constantly adjusting its plan to accommodate movement.” The intended cutting path must be marked by a human beforehand. So, it is not really autonomous; rather it is semi-autonomous.
The video can be seen in its entirety here or you can watch two excerpts below. The first is the robot using cautery to make a straight 5 cm skin incision which is compared to an unidentified surgeon cutting a similar incision. Watch approximately 15 seconds of this clip.
As you can see, the surgeon strays from the intended path about halfway through the process. But note that the surgeon is not holding the cautery the way most surgeons would use it. The proper way to hold the instrument is as if it were a pencil. No human could possibly cut a straight line holding the instrument as far away from the tip as the video depicts.
A second video shows the STAR excising a geometrically shaped pretend tumor.
Note: Although the video is being shown at 4X speed, it is still painfully slow. It is not clear what would happen if the robot encountered a blood vessel that bled despite the use of cautery, which by the way is not the instrument of choice for excising many tumors.
What we have here is a nice example of a “straw man” which is comparing a new technique against a phony one to make the new one look better.
Another website, IEEE Spectrum, went with this headline:
The headline should have read:
[Type straw man or artificial intelligence in the search field to your right on my blog site for more posts about these two topics.]
According to a survey published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the 2017 graduating class has a median medical school debt of $180,000. The figure has remained stable for the last three years. Nearly 27% of students say they had no debt at all.
When the cost of pre-medical education is included the total debt climbed to a median of $195,000.
Despite those numbers, 54.5% said their choice of a career specialty was not based on the level of educational debt. Instead, over 98% said they chose their specialty based on its fit with their personality, interests, and skills.
The survey was offered to all 19,242 graduates of the 140 US medical schools with 15,609 (81%) responding. Some did not answer every question.
Most of the respondents (90%) were satisfied with the quality of their medical education. Only 7.6% said that if they could do it over they would not or probably would not enroll in medical school again; 9.1% gave a neutral response; 7.7% did not answer. Over the last five years, responses to this question have not varied much.
