EvoS: A Prescription for What Ails Pre-Medical Education?

Abstract

Pre-medical students are certainly a widely varied group, with different motivations and experiences, different skills sets and interests. However, they often tend to approach their undergraduate education as a necessary evil that they must endure in order to achieve their ultimate goals. This article summarizes recent literature addressing some of the questions that have been raised regarding premedical education programs. Are students prepared for the intellectual, emotional, and even physical challenges of medical training? What deficiencies are commonly seen in entering medical students? What are students' perceptions of how well their pre-medical studies helped them? Many of these studies have resulted in a call for more science training, while some have advocated for less, but with an enhanced focus on humanistic studies. We supply a brief outline of our Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program and reflect upon how participation in this program can enhance pre-medical students' education. Importantly, we argue that EvoS can expand students' depth of understanding of science, as well as nurture their ability to think about the needs of their patients and the context of their medical practice.A student showed us a neat trick. He wrote a single word on a piece of paper and asked some of his fellow students to simply read it out loud. The students were all of the premedical persuasion, doing well in their coursework and engaged in their studies. The word was UNIONIZED. Surprisingly, the majority of the students said "un-ion-ized," rather than "union-ized."For those that are not sure, "un-ion-ized" is not a wordit has no meaning. But these students picked out the "ion" part of the word as being most meaningful, rather than seeing a relatively commonly used word. The term "ion" is very important in chemistry, but it generally is not part of "normal" conversations. Why did they do this? What does it mean about them and the education they are receiving? How does this relate to their future careers in medicine? What is Wrong with Pre-Medical Education?When approached by prospective students about the quality of the pre-medical major at our college, one must respond by saying that we do not have a pre-med major. In fact, most colleges and universities do not, and this is particularly true for colleges that focus on a liberal arts education, like our own. Instead, pre-med is a "state of mind." It is a selfidentification and it really is not a valid designation until one is actually enrolled in medical school. Somebody that takes pre-med courses but does not gain entrance into medical school is not truly pre-med.Pre-med students are goal-oriented by definition. There are particular lists of classes, experiences and tests that these students must complete to achieve their goal. There are as many motivators that result in the production of a pre-med mentality as there are students that identify as such. But, in our experience, there are usually some aspects of family or cultural respect for the career, glamorization of doctor...

Evolutionary studies from the student perspective

“…One exceptional project that came out of the collaborative nature of the EvoS program was the special issue of the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach (EEO) which was entirely devoted to the EvoS Consortium and guest edited by EvoS pioneers Rose Sokol Chang, Glenn Geher, Jennifer Waldo, and David Sloan Wilson. The journal's editor-in-chief Dr. Niles Eldredge, after honoring SUNY New Paltz by giving a talk in the EvoS Seminar Series, appreciated the mission of EvoS enough to collaborate on this special issue, in which a number of students scored publications (e.g., Geher, Crosier, Dillon, & Sokol Chang, 2011;Waldo & Greagor, 2011). The special issue of EEO was only one of the many remarkable endeavors that have come out of EvoS's curriculum-bridging efforts and the connections that it creates.…”