Differences between Medical schools: Primary Care, Research, Public Health...

Bigredmed
Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:02:14 +0000

Without getting into the flaws with the USNews methodology

Generally, the differences are very MINOR. All the schools will grant you an MD and allow you to go in any direction. Where the differences arise are the culture and opportunities made available to medical students.

Your “research schools” will push students towards research projects from very beginning. There will be an emphasis on participation in research projects and the overwhelming majority of clinical faculty (clinical faculty being the MD’s that teach third and fourth year med students patient care), will have active research projects.

The “primary care schools” will place a greater emphasis on educating students to become good clinicians. They may provide greater opportunities for first and second year students to get into the clinics and be involved in patient care. They may put 3rd year students in unique situations during their clerkships (my med school is on the PC list, and our family medicine clerkships are in rural towns throughout the state). These unique opportunities may influence the choices of student’s specialties in the future.

The public health schools will do the same sorts of things but in regards to public health. They will encourage students to pursue MPH, may require public health projects from their students even if they’re not going for the extra credential.

The important thing to realize is that you get an MD from all the schools, and from any school you can go in any direction. If you go to a research school, you can go into public health. If you’re at a public health school, there’s nothing preventing you from going into primary care. And obviously, if you go to a primary care school, you will have no problem doing research. In fact, there are many residency programs across all specialties that require their residents to complete research. And many fellowship programs (for further subspecialization) also require research. For example, the national board governing the pediatric subspecialty fellowships (ie peds cardiology, peds emergency medicine, peds gastroenterology or neonatalogy) requires every single peds fellow to complete between 12 and 18 months of research (with a project to show for it) during their three year fellowship.