<p>Ok, I know this doesn’t really pertain to US schools as much since you have to do a set of pre-med courses in undergrad which include BCPM courses before applying to med school. However, while researching med schools in other countries where you can enter straight out of high school I found that the pre-req for some schools where they only require chem + 1 other science/math subject at an advanced level. I always thought that Biology was the subject that was most relevant to being a doctor, was I wrong? If I’m right, why is it that chemistry is required but biology isn’t? Don’t get me wrong, I know that chemistry is one of the fundamental subjects for medicine, but is it more so than biology? Just a thought…</p>
<p>Perhaps the curricula differ. What we Americans perceive as Bio may differ from what they perceive as Bio. The same may be applicable for Chem. There are many different ways one can go with this, as far as difficulty, pertinence to medicine, etc.</p>
<p>Chemistry tends to weed out pre-meds moreso than Bio, maybe that is their reasoning. I’m not one of those on the “bio is for sissy’s it’s just memorization” boat, but I do believe many struggling pre meds will prefer biology to gen chem and Ochem anyday.</p>
<p>Also, the more lax set of requirements in different countries, one could make a case for, is due to a higher seats per applicant ratio in the foreign country as opposed to the US. Quite simply, US med schools can afford to make many classes compulsory in order to assure only the best of the best apply and matriculate.</p>
<p>Maybe they teach the bio that is needed in med school???</p>
<p>@UcannyCrayon: I see your point, and some of the schools that have chem as compulsory were Oxford and Cambridge for example. And in the UK, applicants are only permitted to apply to 4 schools so I can see your point about US being able to have many prerequisites in order to choose the best applicants as there are no barriers to applicants.</p>
<p>@mom2collegekids: I know that, but wouldn’t they do that for chem too? I thought the policy for the majority of university courses is that they would start from scratch (for example in intro, and gen ed courses) and assume that students would be experiencing the subject for the first time. Isn’t that basically why American students who get 4s and 5s on AP exams can skip intro classes at universities because it would mean that they would have already been introduced to and learned some of the material of the subject in question?</p>
<p>As I consider what I do on a daily basis, and what I use from my undergrad days…there’s very, very little of the biology. There’s not very much chemistry either, but the chemistry provides a more basal foundation - vocabulary, basic concepts, etc, than any of the biology classes I had in college save genetics. </p>
<p>Thinking about it, the biology concepts I need now were entirely covered in medical school. Undergraduate courses that covered the same objectives were typically far too detailed to be of use in med school. And there are huge swaths of bio that were worthless…phylogeny? Anything plant related? Ecology? All things I don’t use. Genetics is probably the one exception that I pick out now, but I went to a medical school that had a specific genetics requirement for entrance, and as such, the medical geneticists that taught us jumped right into the important topics with out much background. Further, as a pediatrician, genetics is a much more important part of my practice than it is in any other field of medicine that I can think of. If I were an orthopedic surgeon or specializing in geriatrics, I don’t know that I would point out genetics as being a particularly important part of my training. I’m very certain that I wouldn’t be ordering a genetics consult one or two times a month like I do now.</p>
<p>Chemistry on the other hand, I liken more to vocabulary. I don’t worry much about chemical reactions, stoichiometry, or organic chemistry mechanisms, and none of those things were revisited in medical school. But I talk about acids/bases every day in the ICU, apply LeChatelier’s Principle in why high dose amoxicillin overcomes resistant strains of strep pneumo when treating an ear infection, and how important osmolarity is in the development of cerebral edema during diabetic ketoacidosis. Without understanding those basic concepts, I could probably still do my job okay, but I would function more like a nurse - frequently knowing WHAT to do, but rarely WHY to do it. To be fair, there are plenty of physicians who never take the time to understand the reasoning behind their actions. </p>
<p>All that said, for me, what I actually use most frequently, essentially unaltered from undergrad is physics - particularly all the stuff involving circuits, pressures and resistance. I’m not sitting there solving equations for values, but those relationships that the physics equations explain are extremely important. Again, part of this is my interest in critical care medicine and so thinking about circulation/hemodynamics and airway physiology requires those things, where other fields they’d be way less important.</p>