Thoughts on Ranking Medical Schools

Found these posts and thought it might interest some. The second article comments on the first.

Rethinking the Way We Rank Medical Schools

During my internship, the first year after graduating from medical school, I took care of a middle-aged woman who began our first conversation with a question that patients still ask me today.

“So doctor,” she said as I pulled my stethoscope out to listen to her heart, “where did you go to medical school?”
In a social context, I might have considered her question to be polite chatter, a filler during an awkward quiet moment. But on that particular afternoon her words felt more like a dart lobbed at what I had presumed to be a budding and promising patient-doctor relationship... read article

What Makes for a ‘Top’ Medical School: the disconnect between medical schools and national priorities

Terrific piece by Pauline Chen describing the stark disconnect between our national health care workforce needs and what our medical schools produce.

Our nation desperately needs a larger and more effective primary care workforce.  This need is driven by the decades of research linking high performing health systems to good primary care.  People who have more access to good primary care (easy access, good relationship, comprehensive services, care coordination) are less apt to end up the hospital or emergency department - an outcome we can all agree is in our personal as well as collective best interest... read article