Odd. Medical School was one area where four years actually seemed appropriate to consume the amt of knowledge necessary. As opposed to 4 years of college.<p>To be honest, it's really residency training programs that have become too long. You pretty much know what you need to know to become a PCP after two years of residency training in primary care. And I'm not sure if you really need 6 years of post medical school training to become a cardiologist or gastroenterologist. Seems like 4 would be enough. But the people who make these decisions, like the American Board of Medical Specialties, won't hear of this. In an era of rising tuition rates and declining reimbursements, they need to reconsider what not only makes for a reliable practitioner, but also one that isn't drowning in debt for years. Otherwise many of our best and brightest will mostly pursue other professions.
As someone who went to medical school, this makes a lot of sense. 4th year of medical school was filled with elective time and could have been mostly skipped.<p>Don't think combining that year with others would be hard at all. On the other hand I don't necessarily agree that residencies necessarily need to be shorter ( as someone else commented here ) At least, im not sure to what advantage it would serve.<p>Residency is a matter of real life on-the-job experience. You can start graduating people early but then you are just graduating less experienced people. It's hard to compress the same work experience in a shorter amount of time, at least with the hours restrictions that are in place. And unlike my 4th year of medical school, my residency had much less downtime.
This is a fantastic idea. It's interesting that they are starting by making it available to people going into primary care, though, for which the final two years will be most useful.<p>My specialist physician friends say that they basically restarted their training in residency. In particular, I have pathologist friends who say they almost never use knowledge from their clinical rotations in medical school, and might as well just not have done them.