Kiah Ferrell
Training of Medical Students
Southeastern University
Introduction
Training in the medical field has recently become very technical and advanced. Medical students are paying anywhere from $207,688 and $278,455 over the four-year span (Is Medical School Worth It Financially, 2017). As well as money, students are spending an extra four years on top of their undergraduate just to be able to work with a real patient. Society is doing their best to prepare the future doctors for the real world. Medical schools, with the advancement of technology, are now using simulation-based robots or dummies to train their students. The use of simulation can be a fundamental benefit to the students’ training, but it has shown some problems. The interaction and communication between the doctor and patient have been strained by insurance protocols, and moreover, treatment is often based on symptoms as opposed to mental causes because they have been trained by dummies who show no mental or emotional effects.
Beneficial Training
Throughout my research, I have found articles on both sides of this issue. There are similar articles stating that simulation-based training for medical school is more beneficial than other training. These articles believe that the training prepares the doctors well enough even though it is mostly symptom-based. One article, for example, terms this training an “ethical imperative” because it allows doctors to perform high-risk procedures without the risk of injury or harm to the patients (Rosen, 2014). This is one benefit of this type of training. With dummies as patients, doctors in training can perform treatment without impacting a life of a real human. Another article that sides with Rosen performed a survey of residents who participated in a simulation-based training program. The results they found were interesting. “The residents stated that the simulations met their expectations and helped prepare them for the high-stress, high-impact environment they will work in,” (Thompson Bastin, Cook, & Flannery, 2017). The dummies can do show symptoms of most illnesses and progressively get worse or better based on the treatment plan. This can somewhat help doctors understand what type of environment and situations they will encounter in their future. In the end, both articles agree that simulation training is best for our future doctors.
Harmful Training
On the other viewpoint, I found articles that believe that this type of training is hurting our doctors. These articles state that trainees will not be able to treat unusual patients unless they show the exact symptoms with and in which the doctors were trained by. Being trained by simulation, doctors are being restricted to only symptom-based problems, not any mental difficulties. For example, the mental communication between doctors and patients was tested in a study in Australia. The study was of women who were 60-65 years old who had back pain. Based on the communication between the doctor and the patient, and of their training in medical school, the treatment plan was different. Part of the patients in the study was able to go the alternative route (CAM) because of their communication with their doctors. While the patients that didn’t communicate well had to stick to the traditional route with less success (Murthy et al., 2017). This study proves that if doctors are just trained on the physical signs, their course of treatment may vary from doctors who look into the patient on a deeper level. Another article, in agreement with the first article, suggests integrating more of a mental health approach into primary care practice in Russia: “In 2002, 76% of deaths had to do with the mental health of the person,” (Jenkins R et al., 2009). It is only because primary care doctors do not know how to diagnose these problems because they have not been trained with regard to the dynamic relationship between mind and body. Simulation-based training is unable to train doctors on these issues and this is having a huge effect on the lives of these patients.
Analysis
After full consideration to both sides of this issue, I believe that despite being the minority simulation-based training is doing the society more harm than it is worth. While doing my research, I found it was a lot harder to find information on the minority side. Many researchers believe that the simulation training is above and beyond what we had before. I do not disagree with that statement. I just think that there are some key parts in medical training that are omitted from the training by simulation. When using dummies as patients, doctors do not get to practice the daily communication they should normally have. They also do not get to see the mental symptoms if there are any. This creates a problem once doctors are out of training. They will not be as prepared for mental issues and communication issues that happen all the time in the medical field. They may misdiagnose someone because they were not able to obtain all the information. The doctors may be able to treat symptoms on a piece of paper but patients are not just symptoms. In Russia, 76% of the patient’s deaths were due to mental causes (Jenkins R et al., 2009). Even if doctors were trained superficially to encounter mental trauma, differently they could see that number decrease. As doctors, that should be their goal. Death, no matter the cause, is awful and it is the doctor’s duty to try to eliminate that margin of error. It all starts with the training.
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Conclusion
Overall simulation training and communication skills between doctors and patients play a significant role in patient care. The majority of the country believes that simulation training with dummies is beneficial to the preparation of doctors. It prepares trainees without the risk, and it also is more realistic than virtual reality training. I being the minority, believe that is it a step in the right direction, but it is missing some key parts. The mental symptoms and communication are not included. Those both have an impact on the patient and doctor and should be taken into consideration. It is not easy to get into medical school and it definitely is not cheap either, so the people that do get in should have the best training and become the most successful in their careers. In the future, I hope to see some changes being made to medical school training so that doctors can improve their practice in all aspects.
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References
Is Medical School Worth it Financially? – BestMedicalDegrees.com. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2017, from http://www.bestmedicaldegrees.com/is-medical-school-worth-it-financially/
Jenkins R, Bobyleva Z, Goldberg D, Gask L, Zacroeva AG, Potasheva A, … McDaid D. (2009). Integrating mental health into primary care in Sverdlovsk. Mental Health in Family Medicine, 6(1), 29–36.
Murthy, V., Adams, J., Broom, A., Kirby, E., Refshauge, K. M., & Sibbritt, D. (2017). The influence of communication and information sources upon decision-making around complementary and alternative medicine use for back pain among Australian women aged 60–65 years. Health & Social Care in the Community, 25(1), 114–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12275
Rosen, Dennis. Vital Conversations, edited by Dennis Rosen, Columbia University Press, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/seu/detail.action?docID=1763960.
Thompson Bastin, M. L., Cook, A. M., & Flannery, A. H. (2017). Use of simulation training to prepare pharmacy residents for medical emergencies. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 74(6), 424–429. https://doi.org/10.2146/ajhp160129
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