Total Re-design of Medical Education Needed.

I was taught in medical school how medicine was, not how medicine is or should be. I watched helplessly as my 'instructors' attempted to teach me obviously out dated, useless information and endured incredibly time-wasting activities such as staring at your shoes for hours while inefficient, ineffective communication occurred. This was also known as rounding and the chart.

Meanwhile, HMO's the government and seemingly everyone else was tightening their grip on medicine. I watched in helpless horror as the leaders, academics and medical 'educators' continued their time-honored, abusive medical teaching techniques and practices which only served ego's and in some cases were illegal.

And the requirement for more documentation poured in. And the tonnage of medical information doubled just while I was in medical school. And Physicians brains, despite wishful thinking, did not get bigger.

This has to change. Increasing medical information and technology must be met with technology. Instructors and medical schools must in wholesale numbers drop the pen and pick up the power tools. The enormous memorization, time-wastage, disorganization, elitism and harassment beginning in medical school must end and be replaced by efficient, humane and effective technology solutions. The sum total of medical school and residency should take no more than 5-6 years total, irrespective of specialty. Medical knowledge must be re-organized in machinable forms. The greed that keeps effective clinical software proprietary and out of the hands of practitioners has to cease. Abusive teaching practices, mis-management of staff and fear must be abolished.

This site and Freemed is a start. It CAN be done.

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