Sounds like the criteria are, quite simply: first world country, English language education (the latter partially including Switzerland, which appears to have moved further towards using English in STEM education than other European countries). Of the cuff, I can say that both Britain and Switzerland have targeted medical education right after the high school level. Britain actually stops general ed after GCSEs, at the age of 16. A student may have seen nothing but STEM subjects from 11th grade onwards. Higher ed in all of the other countries tends to be modelled after Britain.
Nope, these are credential recognition criteria for specialties. Within those countries, recognition is done on an institution-by-institution basis.
ETA for clarity: International GP intake is funneled at the provincial level and based on a standard of meeting "Canadian or US equivalency" as designated by either the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools or by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education of the United States of America.
It's not arbitrary. These are the Canadian checklists used, and individual site-selection and evaluation is done on a per-institution basis--
https://www.afmc.ca/accreditation/interim-accreditation-review-process-irp/checklistsIf you were to compare outcomes across Canada, you’d have to make a regression analysis removing the differences in both quality of student intake and of premed education at CEGEPs (which are really 12th year of high school and one year of college) and other 2 year colleges compared to the 3 years bachelors degrees at more reputed colleges, And then, specifically doctors whose extra year(s) of post secondary education have been spent with subjects related to medicine as opposed to general ed.
Correct, and that's what's done.
*everything else being equal*, I challenge you to find a significant improvement in health outcomes with doctors who have spent another two years in college taking general ed classes.
Ah, but you're mis-specifying the base case if you're referring to Canada.
As I mentioned above, in Canada, these doctors
aren't taking gen ed classes--they're taking mostly prescribed science and math subjects as prerequisites to med school. So it's not +2 years in gen ed vs not, it's +1/2 years of undergraduate level science training at the third or fourth year vs non-US international models where students do not take a separate gen ed undergrad.
If we're talking the US, then yes, base case is no gen ed vs +2 years gen ed to med school. You'd need to specify a vector of elective courses and weight their quality by institution.
My hunch is that, even in the US, you'd have significant improvements in clinical outcomes for some psychology and pre-pharmacology courses, because there's good research out there to support empathy training among family practitioners and enhanced pharmacy training for high-risk patient populations.
Where there's significant cultural or linguistic variability in a patient population, the presence of multiple language credits would correlate strongly with patient compliance for treatment regimens simply by dint of more effective doctor-patient communication. This is something of substantial value in major cities with diverse populations. Similarly, if doctors are working among at-risk populations, courses in social work that link medical patient outcomes to community-based program offerings and home-based care can improve medical outcomes through partnership with tertiary service providers. It's all relevant.
You've got me curious. Any chance you work for a grant-issuing organization that's interested in funding this research?
