Some medical schools are condensing courses and cutting time off from school in an effort to cut the cost of earning a medical degree and encourage more students to take up primary care, according to an American Medical News report.
In the fast-tracked plans, medical students begin clerkship in their second year, earlier than in the traditional four-year med school model.
"There are many of us in medical education who wonder about the need for the fourth year of medical school," said Robert Pallay, MD, and chair of the family medicine department at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Ga., one of the medical schools experimenting with a three-year model.
Specifically, Dr. Pallay and others question the need for specialty rotations in that final year of school.
Along with Mercer, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Erie, Pa., Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in Lubbock, and Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Lafayette have tested three-year medical school programs with a limited student enrollment.
A consortium of six schools — including Texas Tech, Mercer and LSU — have applied for a $23 million grant from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in an effort to expand the three-year model to other campuses.
The schools are taking varying approaches to reformatting the curriculum to meet the demands of medical school training in a shortened timeframe.
While unusual, accelerated medical schooling is not new; the Medical College of Virginia offered a three-year model during World War II, and around a dozen schools experimented in the 1980s and 1990s with allowing students to receive residency training while completing their fourth year of medical school, according to the AMA report.
However, some physicians are skeptical of an accelerated model.
"I’m concerned about pushing students into clinical training before they become sufficiently mature from life lessons to lend context and perspective to those experiences," said Perry Pugno, MD, and vice president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
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In the fast-tracked plans, medical students begin clerkship in their second year, earlier than in the traditional four-year med school model.
"There are many of us in medical education who wonder about the need for the fourth year of medical school," said Robert Pallay, MD, and chair of the family medicine department at Mercer University School of Medicine in Savannah, Ga., one of the medical schools experimenting with a three-year model.
Specifically, Dr. Pallay and others question the need for specialty rotations in that final year of school.
Along with Mercer, Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine in Erie, Pa., Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in Lubbock, and Louisiana State University School of Medicine in Lafayette have tested three-year medical school programs with a limited student enrollment.
A consortium of six schools — including Texas Tech, Mercer and LSU — have applied for a $23 million grant from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in an effort to expand the three-year model to other campuses.
The schools are taking varying approaches to reformatting the curriculum to meet the demands of medical school training in a shortened timeframe.
While unusual, accelerated medical schooling is not new; the Medical College of Virginia offered a three-year model during World War II, and around a dozen schools experimented in the 1980s and 1990s with allowing students to receive residency training while completing their fourth year of medical school, according to the AMA report.
However, some physicians are skeptical of an accelerated model.
"I’m concerned about pushing students into clinical training before they become sufficiently mature from life lessons to lend context and perspective to those experiences," said Perry Pugno, MD, and vice president of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
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