Can you get an MD online?

not yet, but . . .

https://www.forbes.com/sites/shivgaglani/2018/11/28/could-you-get-an-md-online/#2497bdca201c

 

Sure you can. The school will send you this lab kit to start practicing.

 

It will be a great day when an MD can be done online . It may just be a superior method of educating doctors. What exactly can be taught in a classroom that can’t be taught online? Medicine is changing. A patient chart is a file on a computer. A ticket for a test comes with all possible medications, so no guessing. As the doctor types the patient’s symptoms into the patient’s file, the program is already doing an analysis.
I think sitting in a classroom is overrated.

 

What can be taught in a classroom+ lab + hospital ... umm, medicine, maybe. Same with teaching auto mechanics, only much more complex. Read all the books and watch YouTube all you want - you can't learn to be a mechanic without lifting the hood and wrenching on stuff -- even with the diagnostics, code-readers etc. we have these days. Tell you what - you go to the doc who has the 25 MOOC certificates on the wall - and I'll go to the one who has a Med school diploma. We'll see who lives longest. I'm betting it will be me, although I've got a head start on you of ...oh - maybe 20 years.

To the tune of 'Streets of Laredo."

I see by your outfit that you are a doctor.
If I buy an outfit I'll be a doctor too...
Let's all buy outfits so we can be doctors
If you buy an outfit then you'll be one too.

 

Sure there are a lot of tests available - but there's more than those to medicine. When I had what turned out to be a severe heart problem, I underwent some of those tests, including a nuclear one which I failed miserably. Observant doctors saw just what bad shape I was in, pinpointed the problem very quickly and decided I wasn't going home that day. They zipped me upstairs for major surgery the same day - by a skilled surgeon who got her qualifications the traditional hands-on way and had many years of experience.

I don't think I would have survived under your scenario, Phdtobe. I'd likely have expired while the newly-trained docs were looking up the code-book.

 

Well, when you put in that way I can’t disagree. Anyway, the two years leading up to the clinical rotation can be done online. With the advancement in technology, substitutes for actual labs, and hospitals can be done. Technology has advanced so much that surgery can be done with the surgeon not being in the operating room.

 

My view (about DL in general, not just medicine) is that it's great at delivering the kind of material that B&M programs deliver in classroom lecture classes. But DL lags behind when it comes to labs and practical hands-on experiences. A lot of that is like learning to ride a bike, I think. You need supervised practice, over and over.

I wouldn't want to go to a dentist who has never before stuck his/her hands in a patient's mouth.

So as far as medical school goes, the most I can accept is a hybrid arrangement that delivers the lecture portions of basic science classes online, but still retains actual hands-on labs and clinical experiences.

Real life is just a lot more... complicated... than even the best simulations.

 

Set aside DL for a second, the author just made a pretty phenomenal point about competency based education in medicine. If you walk in with a PhD in Neuroscience, maybe you should be allowed to test out of the intro to Neuro course. Or maybe you should be able to do that anyway.

Medical education being one size fits all made sense when it was only the rarest exception that had a person with a prior career or anything beyond undergrad education applying to be a first year med student. These days, they have former nurses, PAs and people with advanced degrees in a plethora of science fields applying. And they're all treated the same way as a 22 year old fresh out of college. I am aware of a program somewhere in Florida that has/had some accelerated entry for PhD holders, but that's about it.

The first step is rethinking the lockstep education. From there, the possibilities can really unfold.

 

I don't think it's far-fetched. University of Wisconsin and Yale are already training physician assistants by distance. One can become an RN by distance and go on to become a nurse practitioner by distance. There are also distance learning programs for veterinary technicians, respiratory therapists, paramedics, dietitians, pharmacists, physical therapists, and occupational therapists.

 

Yes. Oceania School of Medicine (accredited) has been doing this for a few years. They have MDs practicing in the US and elsewhere (e.g Australia) as well as in residency. Study is online with clinical rotations at sites around the US (etc). They have agreements with some sites in the US.

Not a path for everyone and probably not a first choice. My understanding is there are significant drop out rates with most successful people being nurses, PAs and others in the medical field and with connections. It is expensive. It has similar issues other graduates face with foreign medical schools. It is newish.

 

I agree. While some things can clearly be taught online, some can not (at least with current technology). Speaking of which, I just learned that one of the more popular apps is called Froggipedia.
You can learn all sorts of things about frogs and you can even dissect one using an apple pencil.

http://www.theclassnerd.com/2018/04/13/froggipedia-and-ar.html

 

Simulation may be the only way to practice, because creating a real event may not be ethical.

 

frog ethics

http://brainu.org/lesson/ethics-dissection

 

My brother graduates from Oklahoma State College of Osteopathic Medicine in May. I could not imagine had his education been done online. Maybe in the future, I do not know, but right now I feel medical education needs to be done on campus and be hands on.

 

I find it interesting that the Nursing profession has fully embraced non-traditional learning. There seems to be hundreds of schools offering numerous nurse practitioner (graduate) tracks via distance learning. However, they all require some type of clinical "hands-on" component. In addition, the nurse usually has a few years of experience before being accepted. With that said, a lot of schools vary greatly in quality from horrible to outstanding.

The MD online or at least the basic science portion, doesn't seem too far fetched! Perhaps we will see it in the future?? Some of these online foreign medical schools (Oceania, IUHS, USAT) advertise in nursing publications trying to recruit but I'm not sure of their graduate's success rates in gaining a license to practice in the USA. In fact, medical graduates from on campus foreign schools are having difficulty obtaining a residency. I'm sure there are a few that score high on the USMLE and secure a residency but unlike a Nurse Practitioner (NP) or Physician Assistant (PA), a Physician is dead in the water without a residency and has a quarter million or more in debt!

 

There should be no horrible schools, in that accreditation should set a minimum standard that should guarantee a decent education. Horrible schools should not be accredited.

 

There's always a horrible accreditor ready and willing... That said, there are horrible schools of all types - with bad and good accreditation. Shouldn't be, maybe -- but them's the breaks. Of all the frauds perpetrated on Americans (and others), the frauds of higher education may be the most egregious. It's a competitive market in which incompetents can (and do) frequently survive. They may be at the bottom, but there's food of some sort down there.

It's a competitive market. If you're not competitive, rely on marketing.

 

Certainly there are lots of distance-learning nursing programs, but virtually all those that I've seen are RN-to-BS programs for individuals who are already RNs, after having studied in-person, on-campus at community college. Apparently some employers prefer to hire nurses with bachelors degrees or pay them better or something.

The only distance learning ab-initio RN program that I know of is Excelsior's, and it's controversial in the nursing profession. A number of states (like my own California) refuse to license Excelsior graduates. Other states require Excelsior graduates to complete in-person clinical preceptorships in-state before they become eligible for an RN license. And yes, some states don't seem to care, in some cases probably because their legislators never considered distance learning nursing programs.

 

The reason I mentioned distance learning graduate nursing programs and not the plethora of DL RN schools is because the nurse practitioner is a health care provider with prescriptive practice much like a general practice physician. There are hundreds of DL NP programs as well, with schools like Johns Hopkins and Yale. The point being, the public and State licensing boards license nurse practitioners that have studied "online" but are not ready to accept online MD (basic science) programs. Ab-initio Rn is really a completely different subject!

 

So who is policing the accreditors. Shouldn’t accreditors lose their accreditation if they are doing a bad job?