Health Professions Advising

The following articles are about health care, both in the U.S. and globally, and have been chosen as worthwhile reading by the pre-health advisers.  Please take the time to read through these selections.  Your Princeton user i.d. and password will be required for access.  A larger selection of articles is available in the HPA library, along with other resources.

• The Winnowing Fork of Premedical Education: Are We Really Separating the Wheat from the Chaff?
  What happens to premeds? How do those eager, high-achieving, gregarious first-year students, intent on careers in medicine, become the drones that need corrective education in the humanities during their medical school years?
• Perspective: After a Century of Criticizing Premedical Education, are we missing the point? (Academic Medicine, May 2008)
• Entering the Continuum: Undergraduate Preparation for Medical School
  A series of related articles written by faculty at the University of Kentucky and Vanderbilt Schools of Medicine. The project was coordinated by Dr. Elam.
• Changing Premed Requirements and the Medical Curriculum 
  Achieving change today in medical practice requires a comprehensive change in pre-med requirements and medical courses.
• Patching the Pipeline
  The academic path to medicine isn't clear for everyone, but a few programs are showing minority students the way.

• HPA Health Professional School Application Guide for applicants to medical, dental and veterinary school for 2014 matriculation
   
• An Admissions OSCE:  The Multiple Mini-Interview
  Kevin W. Eva, Jack Rosenfeld, Harold I. Reiter & Geoffrey R. Norman
• Assessment of Non-cognitive Traits Through the Admissions Multiple Mini-interview
  Jean-Francois Lemay, Jocelyn M. Lockyer, V. Terri Collin & Keith W. Brownell
• Multiple Mini-interviews Versus Traditional Interviews:  Stakeholder Acceptability Comparison
  Saleem Razack, Sonia Faremo, France Drolet, Linda Snell, Jeffrey Wiseman & Joyce Pickering
• A Postbac Primer
  Options for the ever growing population "non-traditional" med-students.

• Ethics at the Edge of Life 
  Meeting the needs and wishes of dying patients challenges students who are unprepared.
• The Big Squeeze
  What’s being done about medical student indebtedness?
• Aren't You a Nurse?
  Female medical students continue to grapple with gender stereotypes.
• Deeper Healing 
  The practice of medicine most Americans are familiar with has an alternate universe…It is a world where physicians train in alternate institutions, belong to alternate professional organizations and sport an alternate degree:  D.O. (doctor of osteopathy) rather than M.D.
• The First Cut 
  For a student exposed to the OR for the first time, the choreographic nuances can be mystifying.  You want to participate in the dance, but you don’t know how to act, what to say, where to stand or how to scrub.
• Phantom:  Few Are Immune From "Medical Student Syndrome" 
  For medical students and others who work in health care, hypochondria can be an occupational hazard.
• Making the New Grade
  Medical schools today use a variety of grading systems for required basic science courses.
• Exam-Room Rules: What's in a Name?
  Etiquette of how to address someone in the exam room.
• Students Going Abroad for Service-Learning Experiences: Questions Considered
  Student motivations for participating in Global Health service-learning programs, as well as outcomes and ethical issues to be considered.
• Becoming a Doctor, Starting a Family - Leaves of Absence from Graduate Education
  The challenge educators and policymakers, as well as residents and fellows face in dealing with parenting during training.
• Rude Medicine: Are hazing, harassment and abuse an inevitable part of training?
  Bullying surgeons. Power-pimping attendings. Boorish residents. Medical students are warned at the outset that these characters are fact, not fiction, on the wards, and trainees need to grow thick skins.
• American Medical Education 100 Years after the Flexner Report (NEJM, Sept 2006)
  A summary of the changes in medical education over the past century and description of the current challenges, using as a framework the key goals of professional education:  to transmit knowledge, to impart skills, and to   inculcate the values of the profession.

• A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform (NY Times, Aug 2009)
• What Lies Ahead for Healthcare (The New Physician, Sept 2007)
  Forecasting the biggest changes in healthcare over the next few decades.
• Doctor Leads Quest for Safer Ways to Care for Patients
  A Conversation With Dr. Peter J. Pronovost
• An Evolving Foe
  Applying Genomic Tools to the Fight Against Malaria
• When the Doctor is Distressed
• When Doctors Make Mistakes
• A Doctor by Choice, a Businessman by Necessity
  "...the reality is that most doctors today, whether in academic or private practice, constantly have to think about money."
• Helping Patients Get Back on All Four Feet
  A glimpse of life as a veterinary technician.
• Holding the Line
  Among trainees, medical education can reinforce pre-existing stereotypes of race and class.
• Shortage of Doctors an Obstacle to Obama Goals (NY Times, Apr 2009)
  Obama administration officials, alarmed at doctor shortages, are looking for ways to increase the supply of physicians to meet the needs of an aging population...
• Arrogant, Abusive and Disruptive - and a Doctor
  Badly behaved physicians can cause workplace stress and medical errors.
• Health Care Elsewhere
  A comparison of health care cost and benefits from country to country.
• From Medical School to Mission
  The Ethics of International Medical Volunteerism
• Osteopathic Principles and Philosphy: A Contemporary View
  "[Andrew Taylor Still's] basic idea - that the human body was much like a machine, one that would function well if all of the parts were in proper mechanical relationship - was unique compared to the medical thinking of the time."
• Breaking into the Boys' Club
  Why do gender gaps persist in surgical subspecialties?
• Presidential Politics and the Resurgence of Health Care Reform (NEJM Nov 2007)
  Comprehensive health care reform disappeared from the national agenda after the Clinton administration failed to enact universal coverage in 1993 and 1994. Instead, Congress adopted incremental measures that enjoyed bipartisan support, including the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

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