<p>Oh yeah, the trend towards outcome based medicine and the pilot programs in place to reduce patient death due to physician errors are all due to an insidious plot to keep a certain ethnic group out of med school by emphasizing communication skills vs MCAT scores.</p>
<p>IP- you certainly don’t display your logical reasoning skills very well in your arguments.</p>
<p>The necessity of working hard is a great point Teriwtt. Do you think as parents we need to instill the same principles in our kids, to work very, very hard? A certain ethnicity does that, and that has yielded results as well.</p>
<p>If you feel that it is OK for your college graduate child to wait tables or tend bars, then it is fine. I just wonder if that’s the right path. From what I read, the kids themselves are pretty frustrated about it. If perhaps their parents guided them in another direction when they were kids, the frustration wouldn’t be there.</p>
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Better?! Better in what way?</p>
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<p>I have trouble understanding how the above two trends are linked to (purported) social and leadership skills. Are there less deaths if doctors chat up their patients? Yet, an overwhelming majority of US doctors are non-certain ethic group, so clearly it is not the recent certain ethnic community influx that is causing deaths.</p>
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<p>Job prospect.</p>
<p>*Are there less deaths if doctors chat up their patients? *
Communications skills are a huge part of medical training today. <a href=“Patient-doctor communication - PubMed”>Patient-doctor communication - PubMed;
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<p>No wonder, as I really want my surgeon to be my friend.</p>
<p>Regarding your post #44 IP, yes communication skills are VERY important. It has been said that 80% of treating a patient is getting a full and accurate patient history.</p>
<p>Take your argument about the importance of communication skills over to the premed forum. I’m sure you won’t get the last word in there (or at least the last correct word.)</p>
<p>Quote from my NIH link: *“It has long been recognized that difficulties in the effective delivery of health care can arise from problems in communication between patient and provider rather than from any failing in the technical aspects of medical care. Improvements in provider-patient communication can have beneficial effects on health outcomes”. *</p>
<p>The article is older, but many of the recs are now in place.</p>
<p>YOU may not want to be best friends with your surgeon, but I want mine to get a spot-on accurate understanding of my complaint and explain options in an appropriate manner. The professionals decided on the need for this additon to med training. Its not really up for argument.</p>
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<p>The problem is the use of the word instill. It’s a rather subjective term and many parents can say they ‘instilled’ certain principles in their children (even the same parents with two different children and have them turn out vastly different) and you or I might say, “What?” Would I love my children to be hard-working? Sure. But who defines what’s hard-working? I see some of our peers who have not put in the hours H has, and maybe will not have the same career success he has had, but they have a better work-life balance than H has had. In my most recent job, I had the honor of observing families in very acute situations, who willingly opened up to me (and the team I worked with) in a very short time span. How, when and where people reach certain levels of success (or failure) in their lives can be very deliberate, but when things happen out of their control, all their carefully laid-out plans go out the window. </p>
<p>Not to get off topic here, but after reading your threads, I know that your child’s passion is piano. What if he puts his whole life, to the detriment of stymying any other strengths, into his music, then one day has someone close a door on one of his fingers, rendering him useless as a performing musician? What does that do to his sense of self, who he is, how he is expected to contribute to our world? That is the problem for children of parents who have so narrowly limited their world, and some tragedy happens. Of course I’ve provided the most extreme example, but it’s not hard to find stories of someone’s entire livelihood being upended by some tragedy, and if their only means of supporting themselves has been limited to specific knowledge of one subject, then it’s tragic. We need to be well-rounded enough to have other options, which is what LACs tout as their advantage. Parents who ‘instill hard work’ to the point of neglecting other talents or interests, only do a disservice to their children, IMO. So I might instill some things in my children that someone else might say I have failed terribly at. It’s all subjective.</p>
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<p>I can tell you that seven weeks ago, H might have easily been one of these statistics after a serious bike crash. The physician at the acute care center spent all of 3-4 minutes with him. Her total communication: You have a broken clavicle and need to follow up with a orthopedic surgeon in the next day or so (this was a Friday night no less). They might need to consider surgery to place the two ends back together. I’m writing you a prescription for a pain killer."</p>
<p>I’m not kidding, that was it. She knew he was in a bike accident; he had road rash (which she did not address). She did not ask him what happened (if she had, and heard his answer of, “I don’t remember”, it might have been a clue he had a concussion). And she sent him home.</p>
<p>Eighteen hours later in the ER (a different facility where we had to go for the clavicle follow-up), it was discovered he a serious concussion, six badly broken ribs and a pulmonary contusion; he was immediately admitted to the hospital. All because an ER physician decided to actually communicate with my H and ask him questions. Had he lacerated his spleen or lung, he could have died in his sleep that night of the accident at home. So yea, had the first doctor chatted up H, she might have actually discovered how bad the trauma was and taken the necessary precautions (like calling an ambulance to take him directly to the hospital).</p>
<p>instill the same principles in our kids, to work very, very hard?
The 20th c “immigrant” philosophy was “work very very hard.” No offense because my family is full of immigrants for whom that worked. BUT this “work hard and win” sentiment converted, long ago, to “work smart.” </p>
<p>Parents who ‘instill hard work’ to the point of neglecting other talents or interests, only do a disservice to their children…</p>
<p>Parents often instill their own values, based on their own frames of reference and the challenges THEY faced and the dreams they achieved or failed at-- and end up choking their kids, oppressively managing them, trying to instill the parent’s values with no respect for the kid’s interests, skills and dreams. Though Amy Chua’s girls defended her, that’s the complaint behind the Tiger Mom controversy.</p>
<p>Though OP feels his/her kid is fine, we have no input from the kid.</p>
<p>Ok…I may be having an “off” day today but am I the only one who thinks the OP is simply just trying to let everyone know that Indian parents and Asain parents are better than white parents at “directing” their children into STEM related majors? I guess OPs suggestions that “certain” ethnic groups have better yields in particular fields rubs me wrong.</p>
<p>I don’t advocate paying top dollar for high level education and then having a kid end up waiting tables, but life is not ever predictable either. But I am also against kids of any racial group being strong armed into fields because of their family culture. My daughter has a wonderful set of friends from some of these types of parents and they love being here because they can be themselves. Who wants to be the type of parent that raises kids that have to hide their true selves all in the name of the family name or the family’s culture? And what is really important to recognize is that the parents don’t even know that their kids have dreams and wishes outside of STEM because they fear the backlash.</p>
<p>And on the doctor note, heck yeah I want my doctor to chat me up. Sometimes the most insignificant “something” can lead to solving a health problem. If my doctor is not educated on ALL cultures, religious objections to medicine, etc, then they need to go back to school and get educated. Knowing that my knee bone is connected to my shin bone is only a very small piece of what I am made of and a very small part of whatever illness I may have.</p>
<p>Hey guys, can we not make this about my kid again? Someone will get upset and I will be in trouble.</p>
<p>I think we are confusing the skill needed and time taken to diagnose with general social and communication skills. An investigative journalist doesn’t make for the best doctor. But that’s neither here nor there, as we are digressing from the core topic. Given the current economic climate, should parents do anything different from the traditional path?</p>
<p>It’s OK if people believe that no change is needed, waiting tables after getting an English degree is fine, or graduating from a lower ranked school and then getting a job at Starbucks can be rectified with a Masters degree (and more student loans for those that are not supported by their parents). I just worry about this generation of kids who are growing up to a lost decade or two, as the economic slowdown is here to stay. Witness Japan.</p>
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<p>Interesting, I work out with a personal trainer a couple of times a week. At my age, it’s not uncommon to get to a certain exercise that elicits some sort of pain not appropriate for what I’m doing. So he’ll make me stop, then says, “Work smart, not hard.” He’s not an immigrant, though!</p>
<p>“I have trouble understanding how the above two trends are linked to (purported) social and leadership skills. Are there less deaths if doctors chat up their patients?”</p>
<p>Actually, yes. If doctors actually talk to their patients, and even listen to them, they make fewer mistakes and have better outcomes. If they have a good relationship with their patients, their patients are more compliant and report their symptoms more accurately.</p>
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<p>Why? Is your wife sitting next to you taking notes?</p>
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<p>Touche. But seriously, it just gets ugly you know? First it starts with personal attacks directed at me. Then it goes to personal attacks directed at my kid. Then someone jumps up and down about how I am insulting everyone by raising the topic of my kid. It’s just a real mess.</p>
<p>I don’t consider myself a passionate American patriot. So it says something that your posts are beginning to really rub me the wrong way.</p>
<p>The fundamental debate here seems to be between practicality and enrichment. Some people, including many overseas, don’t have the luxury of choosing both. They must sacrifice the opportunity to engage in a liberal arts course of study and get the “most bang for their buck” per se. One great thing about America (a phrase I don’t use liberally, I promise!) is that students often are able to pursue both, or are in good enough shape to choose a more enriching, but possibly less practical, course of study. Why in hell would any student pass up that opportunity just because it won’t necessarily be useful while they draw up design plans for NASA?</p>
<p>That said, the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive anyway. An LA education CAN be practical in different ways, in the sense that it established a more solid sense of where you stand as a human in relation to your practical work, for example.</p>
<p>I appreciate the perspective of another culture, but when assertions of superiority (however subtle they may be) start, I get irritated.</p>