Foot Soldiers
In the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Sandeep Jauhar opposes the recent trend of admitting older (aka nontraditional) students to medical school. His article, entitled “From All Walks of Life- Nontraditional Medical Students and the Future of Medicine” is a mouthful of jargon from the dusty vaults of the academic elite who want physicians to be nothing more than foot soldiers. Conformance and uniformity, rather than innovation and creativity, is slogan of this group of academics.
Dr. Jauhar wants medical schools to think twice before enrolling older applicants because he believes that “we need more data before we can call this a viable strategy for the future.” He is not just in favor of discriminating against older applicants. He doesn’t think very highly of women either:
… the influx of women into medicine in recent decades has been associated with a change in work habits: today, both male and female doctors are less likely than their predecessors to practice medicine to the exclusion of everything else. A recent survey found that 24% of female physicians under 50 work part-time. This trend has put pressure on older doctors nearing retirement, many of whom bemoan the lack of suitable candidates to take over their practices.
So if you’re an older woman trying to go to medical school, make sure your application doesn’t make it to Dr. Jauhar’s desk, whose article is so out of touch with reality that it actually qualifies for an entertaining read.
Filed under: Health Policy
Dr. Khozin,
I don’t think that Dr. Jauhar is suggesting that older women should not be admitted to medical school. I think he is merely presenting the facts. Many women do work part-time clinically (myself included). This is a societal issue. If anything, it was Dr. Smith who alluded to the fact that admitting women may not be the best choice for our population:
Hofstra’s Smith says: “This is . . . obviously a societal question. Does individual freedom take precedence over group needs? In some cases, committees may not think admitting an older student is a good use of the limited number of spots. But you have to be afraid of too much social engineering. Look at women physicians: they tend to work less than men. Does that mean we shouldn’t be admitting female students?”
This issue is deep and spans all professions. A recent article by Lisa Belkin on June 15th in the New York Times Magazine which discusses equality at home and in the work place also taps into this issue.
As a society, we still need to work to make our workplaces friendlier for women, especially those who have responsibilities at home. Admitting fewer women to professional school will only make this inequality more prevalent.
Jessica Freedman, MD
Dr. Freedman,
I agree that Dr. Jauhar is not explicitly saying that women should not be admitted to medical school, but some of his remarks and the overall tone of the article is backwards and offensive. There are many things that we do in our society, out of respect for individual liberty, that may not theoretically seem appropriate for the general population. Individual liberty is the basis of an ethical society and we should do whatever it takes to protect it. History has shown us that if we don’t, we’ll run into serious problems and ethical dilemmas. We shouldn’t turn American medicine into a dictatorship.
This is not a new opinion, or story. When I entered medical school lin 1964 my class consisted of 100 males and 8 females. There were also 2 students who were not caucasian and no hispanics. The two non caucan students were NOT african-americans..
In ‘my day ‘I remember sitting on the admissions committee where we routinely discussed whether an applicant was serious about spending the majority of his(her) life pracitcing medicine. When considering applicants for PG positions, consideration was given to the effects of pregnancy leaves upon ther rotations.
These opinions regarding who should get an M.D. or not, were and in some circles still are the illusion of academia. Their ’self importance’ is very over-rated, as we now see how public opinion and public policy makers opinions far outweigh these “advisors from on high”.
Many medical schools are now 50% female, and also committed to ethnic minority education.
There still remains the challenge of adequate primary care providers, which is not strictly an economic incentive. Rather the intellectual challenge of acquiring and maintaining the level of competency in such a vast arena, is not appreciated by non-medical policy makers.