A quarter of medical school students consider quitting

A new study from Elsevier Health concludes that approximately one-quarter of medical school students consider quitting med school and many of them will never treat patients. This statistic is indeed alarming and probably higher than many suspected.

We believe that if additional surveys find similar results, medical school admissions officers are going to increase their due diligence on applicants and their sincere interest in practicing medicine as well as perhaps their mental fortitude to remain relatively unfazed by many of the events that trigger this urge to quit. We expect such a move would mostly alter the medical school admission interview process.

Mt. Sinai Receives Racial Discrimination Complaint

A medical watchdog group called Do No Harm is alleging the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai engaged in illegal racial discrimination in a civil rights complaint filed with the US Department of Education.

Specifically, the complaint states Icahn’s Visiting Electives Program for Students Underrepresented in Medicine fellowship violates Title VI. Do No Harm explained, “Medical students who are not members of one of the designated racial/ethnic groups above in bold are illegally excluded from the University’s ‘Visiting Electives Program for Students Underrepresented in Medicine (VEPSUM) Fellowship.”

The medical school’s website states the fellowship in question is “designed to increase diversity in the house staff and the faculty of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and its affiliated institutions by helping talented minority medical students gain access to electives in our programs.”