<p>Felt I should respond to a couple things. First, this was a ways up the page, but:
The WHO ranking is a very poor metric of “level of health.” The study is terribly flawed. For starters, it is biased against countries whose health care systems do not have strong socialized elements (ie, the US). Also, it takes into account some highly unstandardized measures of quality, such as infant mortality (some countries do not attempt to save premies; other countries do not include premature infant deaths in their infant mortality statistics; this makes them seem better than the US when, in fact, they’re not). Case in point, the WHO, while a respectable institution, has put together a heavily skewed, totally unreliable study for comparing the level and quality of health between nations.</p>
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I’ll give you points for realizing that it doesn’t compare to what a doctor has to go through, but I don’t think you realize just how different it is. I’m not a doc or a med student, but I have been an EMT for several years, and the knowledge gap is tremendous. Becoming an EMT can be worthwhile, but it’s certainly not difficult. Note, I am assuming that you’re talking about EMT-B. EMT-I certainly takes longer, and becoming an EMT-P is a beast in itself.</p>
<p>In fact, I don’t even understand how an EMT-B class can be stretched for 3 years? Or even six months? There’s simply not that much information. The class I took was less than two months. We met 3-4 times a week (2 weekday evenings, 1-2 weekend mornings). Even then, the pace was much slower than any college science course I took.</p>
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Bacteria? Antibiotic resistance? Among other things. Evolution is very important, not only for a future physician, but for anybody planning a career in or related to biological/medical science.</p>