After having listened to our Dean talk about the current state of the med school and where we’re headed, I’ve realized how far down on the list of priorities undegraduate medical education really is to an academic medical center (AMC). It must be weird to hear that medical education is not the main goal of a medical school; it’s much weirder living it.
The bottom line is, medical education is a resource sink. First of all, medical education doesn’t bring in the big bucks like research grants do; in fact, most, if not all med schools lose money on education. Most of us don’t pay 100% of our tuition, and even then, tuition does not cover all of the costs of providing an undergraduate medical education. Secondly, medical education has a very very long timeline for return – it takes 8 or more years for us to become licensed physicians ready to give back to the community. Last, undergraduate medical education affects a tiny fraction of the people involed in an academic medical center – the vast majority of an AMC’s employees work in research or solely in patient care.
Without much pull on the administration, undergraduate medical education can fall pretty far down on the list of issues to worry about for an academic medical institution. But that’s the reality of our current situation. My only hope is that the letter I’m about to write to the Dean imploring him to focus on improving the quality and standing of undergraduate medical education won’t fall on deaf ears. But I’m not holding out much hope.
