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	<title>PreMed Roadmap</title>
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	<link>http://premedroadmap.com</link>
	<description>Medical school admissions guide provided free for pre med students of all ages</description>
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		<title>What Can Nursing Schools Do To Attract More Men?</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/what-can-nursing-schools-do-to-attract-more-men/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/what-can-nursing-schools-do-to-attract-more-men/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:32:04 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=831</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Kathryn Norcutt had a rewarding career in nursing and now is spending her time writing and passing along knowledge gained from years of experience and research. If you are interested in becoming a travel nurse, take advantage of her wise insights regarding the nursing profession. What Can Nursing Schools Do To Attract More Men? In today&#8217;s society, there are still job-related stereotypes that remain from decades past. For example, only men were mechanics in the past. However, many women are entering the field today. The opposite applies for nursing. While this job was viewed as a woman&#8217;s work in decades past, more and more men are joining the ranks today. Nursing is a field that is constantly growing in complexity and tasks. As today&#8217;s society continues to equalize in jobs and in other ways, expect to see more male nurses. There are plenty of benefits to having men in the nursing profession. Some of these include the following: Men generally have good physical strength, which enables them to do heavy lifting. It is common for many difficult female patients to cooperate better with male nurses. Male patients who do not want female nurses helping them with private care will appreciate male nurses. Since female nurses do not want men to outshine them, having male nurses on staff can provide healthy and friendly competition for everyone to perform at their best. It is a common occurrence that having one or more men on staff cuts down on gossip and cattiness in the workplace. Male nurses tend to be passionate about what they do, so they often encourage patients, visitors and coworkers without even trying. Source: http://nursinglink.monster.com/benefits/articles/3492-6-reasons-male-nurses-rock Attracting Men to the Nursing Profession With all of the great benefits associated with having male nurses on staff, it is important for both schools and employers to encourage men to enter the field. Male nurses only make up approximately five percent of the workforce in the nursing profession. To appeal to men, it is important to find the aspects of nursing that would make them want to consider joining. The following are some good ways educational institutions can attract more male nursing students: Dispel the stereotype that nursing is a profession for women. Stress the complex technological aspects of various specialties. List the wide range of specialty areas that might appeal more to men. For example, cardiology would likely be more attractive to them than labor and delivery. Stress that nursing is much more than bedside care and bathing. List some examples of how men can advance and promote in nursing careers. Suggest some adventurous and exciting opportunities such as travel nursing. Men are practical creatures, so emphasize the long-term stability of nursing careers, good pay and attractive benefits. If program guides include stock photos of nursing professionals, be sure to include pictures with male nurses. Whenever possible, have male recruiters meet with prospective male students. Make sure men who are enrolled know they have a solid support system to avoid having them drop out or change majors. &#160; In addition to emphasizing these important points, nursing schools and program directors should consider raising the bar on their entrance requirements. Men naturally enjoy competition and challenges, so they are not as likely to be attracted to a program that is extremely easy to enter. If the requirements are stricter, they may find the challenge more attractive. Some schools saw not only the number of applicants rise after doing this but also the number of applications from men. Source: http://www.minoritynurse.com/men-nursing/recruiting-men-nursing-school &#160; Fortunately, more men have been entering the field since the recession in the late 2000s. Many schools will still need to put forth some extra effort to see the number of their male nursing students rise. Reaching out to hospitals and nursing homes by encouraging them to add tuition reimbursement or other benefits is a good way for schools to attract more male students. Program directors should encourage administrators in these facilities to reach out to current male employees in other departments that pay less. If they are presented with an attractive opportunity to learn for an affordable cost but also receive better pay and benefits in the future, many are likely to be enticed enough to jump on the offer. Social media, newsletters and other correspondence that is available to the public can also be helpful. If every school puts forth the effort, more men will likely enter the field and add their valuable contributions to the many positive contributions women are currently providing. Source: http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/blog/9-ways-nursing-programs-are-attracting-more-men/]]></description>
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		<title>5 Steps Crucial to Get into Medical School</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/5-steps-crucial-to-get-into-medical-school/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/5-steps-crucial-to-get-into-medical-school/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:40:17 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=825</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[5 Steps Crucial to Get into Medical School Today we have a guest post from Joe Baxter on the crucial steps to getting into medical school. Enjoy! Joe Baxter worked in medical research for the majority of his life. In his spare time, he enjoys traveling abroad, working in his wood shop and freelance writing about medical news. You can read all the stories you want about preparing for Medical school, but each person&#8217;s experience is a little different. It&#8217;s difficult to prepare for, stressful, and once finished you probably question if it was worth all that time and effort seemingly chucked out the window. But it is worth it. If you truly are committed to studying medicine, it&#8217;s worth every minute of your time taken. Bestowed upon you is the right to decide whether a medical action is reasonable, comfortable, invasive or painful. I don&#8217;t need to tell you that the world of medicine is saturated with conflicting and controversial decisions. But if you are desirous to answer yes, then here are a few of my steps which helped me get into Medical school. Know your decision. If you are dead-set on becoming a family health physician or within another realm of medicine, you have already known for a while. You can&#8217;t just one day obtain an epiphany from some higher power telling you to go to Medical school because you made the grades in high school and college. It is completely your decision to determine if this is right for you. Med school is an enormous step, so know exactly what you&#8217;re getting into before making the jump. Know how Medical school works, the schools you apply to, and what these next eight years will entail. Apply early. You hear it quite a bit, but waiting a few days instead of filling out apps or waiting until the next scheduled MCAT can cost you an additional year of living out of your parents&#8217; garage. Volunteer. It doesn&#8217;t matter if you spend two hours a week scrubbing the backsides of residents at a retirement home, because it&#8217;s something to throw on your Medical school resume showing you were at least active, involved, and willing to start at the bottom. Med school committees want to see if you are in this for the long haul. It&#8217;s those little jobs that separate you from all those other applicants. After all, they want to know not only if you are committed to make it through eight years of additional schooling, but also if they can trust you to hold people&#8217;s lives in your hands after the education. If you can&#8217;t handle those unglamorous jobs now, you won&#8217;t be committed later. Get out, intern, and give away your time. Communication. Write, talk, talk, and write some more. Practice this. A hefty portion dictating whether you get into Med school depends on how well you come across to interviewers and the review committees. Your written statement(s), interview skills, and overall ability to speak clearly, concisely, and thoughtfully give those reviewing your entrance request a great picture of how prepared you are. Grab your intern adviser, a professor, or even your sister and practice interviewing in front of them. Wear the exact same clothing, hairstyle, and dress jacket you would wear to the interview. Make great eye contact, carefully listen to each posed question, and answer uniquely and truthfully. Your answers before their questions. This is a tangent from #4, but ensure you are prepared to answer any and all questions the committee can throw at you. Obviously, you&#8217;ll want to know how to answer, “why do you want to become a doctor,” “why is this Medical school right for you,” and “tell me about this C in organic chemistry.” But be prepared for the questions that can catch you off-guard. Questions such as motivational tools you put use to, how do you handle stress, or should doctors be allowed withdraw life support from terminally-ill patients. Many of the questions that stump interviewees are those which may catch an applicant completely off-guard and force them to begin stuttering like a bumbling fool. Preparedness is not something that comes overnight, so begin practicing months ahead of time.]]></description>
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		<title>A Window into the life of a Traveling Clinical Psychologist</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/a-window-into-the-life-of-a-traveling-clinical-psychologist/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/a-window-into-the-life-of-a-traveling-clinical-psychologist/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Feb 2013 00:46:44 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=817</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have a guest post from Vance Hobbes, a freelance writer and former medical researcher about the life of a traveling clinical psychologist. I was a clinical psychologist for 21 years, and was fortunate enough to travel to some very unique places around the world. I mainly worked with unfortunate children, whether that because of recent turmoil within their home country or trouble at home, each of my cases contributed to an overall better understanding of how various minds and social groups function within specific circumstances. I’ll do my best to cover my first situation in a concise and reader-friendly manner, but honestly I find it difficult not including each and every detail over that period, but perhaps an autobiography will be in the works someday to accomplish that goal. So, here goes. In 1990 I received my graduate degree from University of Nevada (Reno), and was honestly burnt out from spending most of my life buried in books and taking study breaks at local coffee shops. So, I figured I’d take a couple years off before finding work as I was able to make minimum student loan payments at relatively low interest rates. So I thought, ‘hmm what to do to reward myself?’ So I set up a trip to Sri Lanka as because I met a couple of my really good friends at school from there. Five weeks prior to my trip, I get a call from a group looking for some young people to travel to a place called Lebanon which was recovering from a recent civil war. The UN had contacted this company and called the situation in dire need of psychological assistance, not only was the national government in need of reparations but the various local populations were in the process of recovering as well. I hadn’t really ever thought of my job as an international duty, but I thought, ‘what a great opportunity to travel as well as practice what I had been training years for.’ My Sri Lankan buddies were pretty bummed, but to get paid to travel was not something I was about to pass up. When I landed in Lebanon, I honestly had no idea what to expect. The place was a mess, but I was surprised to learn only around 17,000 Lebanese casualties (not including civilian) had resulted from the conflict. I understood it had just been involved in an 8-year civil war, but had no idea this would constitute the aftermath. My duty was to reach out to children with broken families, orphans, and those injured from the tools of war. Those first few weeks were extremely difficult for me to cope with. I’ve never been an emotional person, but those first weeks were the most sobering and grim of my entire life. One of my kids had lost his eye and could barely see out his other due to a munitions blast that had killed his brother and left Ruri severely burned. When treating him, I would rarely get a dozen words out of him per week, so advised him to either nod or shake his head to answer my questions. Over time he started to feel more comfortable with me, and the sorrow from losing a family member thawed away and melted into guilt-trip for not protecting his younger brother. This was difficult for him but a common thought process and easy to diagnose. It’s been years since I’ve spoken to Ruri but when I left in 1993 he was working and had met a very pretty girl of which he spent much of his time with. I also spent time at a child daycare just outside Beirut and essentially gave my time to supervise the children living there. Indirectly, I helped various children who had suffered from social and familial disturbances through simple conversational means. For example I met a little 9-year old who went by the name of Mahmoud who hadn’t been directly affected by the war but knew quite a few friends who had lost someone or had lost their homes amidst the conflict. He could not come to terms with why it seemed as if everyone but him had something bad happen to them. It was definitely difficult connecting with the boy as a foreigner who had not experienced the war and the hell it brought. Because I had lost one of my parents while relatively young, I was able to use my experience as an inlet and convince the boy how fortunate he truly was to be unaffected by the terrible situation of war. His parents had been working in northern Lebanon (Tripoli) for a few months but remained in regular contact with their son. It was at this point in time when I had a much greater appreciation for any familial relationship and dearly missed my own back in the states. My assignment would end around eight months later, so my grief soon ended and I returned home. Although my trip to Lebanon only identifies one of my many traveling psychologist assignments, the lessons learned through that trip were applied to subsequent travels I partook in. Understanding each child’s unique circumstances allowed me to approach each situation from a different perspective. I was able to diagnose, treat, and largely ease a child’s pain based upon what I had studied in school and through my experiences with other individuals I had either interned with or came across during my lifetime. In conclusion, the world of the traveling psychologist can be scary at times. Meeting kids like Ruri and Mahmoud and helping them deal with psychological and emotional distress has by far brought me the most satisfaction. I feel like the luckiest man in the world to have had these experiences, and would be happy to speak with any student looking to be a traveling psychologist or who has pondered the prospect prior. Vance Hobbes is a freelance writer and former medical researcher. Hobbes writes about many facets of the medical field, and works with CompHealth. When he&#8217;s not writing the day away, he spends his free time tending to his prizewinning garden and attending any basketball game he can find.]]></description>
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		<title>Career Comparison Shopping With Locum Tenens Positions</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/career-comparison-shopping-with-locum-tenens-positions/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/career-comparison-shopping-with-locum-tenens-positions/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:12:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Admin</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=809</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today we have a guest post about locum tenens positions submitted to us by Adam Ghosh. This is very valuable information to keep in mind about your future career and how to decide what job situation is right for you. Adam Ghosh has over twenty years’ experience as a researcher in the medical field. In that time he has worked with allergists and vascular surgeons, and everyone in between. Now he supplements his early retirement by contributing to Weatherby Healthcare. One of the most valuable experiential byproducts to be gleaned from attending med school and a residency tour (or tours) is determining the professional preferences of an aspiring medical professional. I don’t know how many times I’ve encountered a student (or former student) whose original career path-plan or specialty practice-preference changed based on a class they took or time spent as a resident. Finding out what works for you and what you enjoy is obviously a huge part of the process, but discerning what you don’t like is at least as important. Once the practice particulars have been sorted an equally important and far longer term decision awaits- where do you want to settle and into what sort of practice? Often, realizations and conclusions about specialization, location and position are settled by factors that never would have occurred to someone before school or residency. One friend of mine was dead set on becoming a rural pediatrician until the studying she did for an obstetrics and gynecology course (which she found fascinating despite having never considered it beforehand) introduced her to OB/GYN politics, history and culture, which she found undeniable. Another friend’s discovery of true crime paperbacks in med school led him to pathology. Similarly, I’ve had colleagues that swore off their rural practice because of the travel, isolation and commute. I know several that loved working in the ER during residency but found the hospital politics unpalatable once they were officially employed. There are any number of additional examples I can cite but no need to belabor the point: there’s no teacher like experience and before you choose your hospital/clinic/private practice as a GP/podiatrist/neurosurgeon in the urban/rural/suburban north/south/east/west, it’s never a bad idea to test drive it. A great tool for doing so is taking locum tenens contracts in or near places that appeal in the employment situation you’re considering (maybe more than one of them, if possible)- hospital, big/small; clinic, public/private; practice, urban/rural, etc. Tenure as a locum tenens provides a real-time window to your future somewhere. Often a wider window than is granted by visiting a place is all-important. If you’re dreaming of a job in tropical Hawaii or the beautiful, verdant Pacific Northwest, living and working there for a year is going to be a substantially better litmus test for your patience with year-round heat and very expensive dairy products or six months of rain (all of which, oddly, appeals to me; I’m lactose intolerant). And that week-long jaunt to New York during which you fell in love with the Big Apple may not accurately reflect your relationship after a year of subway commuting and your $1800-a-month closet-sized studio apartment. (Then again, it might prove a perfect reflection.) Perhaps your love of skiing brought you to rural Idaho. Better to find out before you settle down that your fervently liberal politics prove a poor fit with the Gem State. (Or that your Fox News bumper sticker wins you no friends in San Francisco.) As briefly mentioned- the same goes for your place of employment. Even if you are a committed hospitalist, the culture, politics, management and care style, focus and atmosphere can obviously vary significantly. Your experience at an urban hospital in Boston is going to contrast considerably with an experience at an urban hospital in Los Angeles, much less a small, rural hospital in Mississippi. The locum tenens dynamic is, in my opinion, underutilized. Particularly for someone considering more than one location or employer, working as a locum tenens is almost always an effective means of establishing a preference. If you’re recently out of school or otherwise in a position to do so- look into some locum tenens positions. Chances are you won’t regret it.]]></description>
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		<title>Medical Students With Disabilities Can Succeed</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/medical-students-with-disabilities-can-succeed/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/medical-students-with-disabilities-can-succeed/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 18 Jan 2013 13:44:27 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=805</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We came across an inspiring article in the Globe and Mail written by Anthony Vo, a second year medical student with a learning disability.  Anthony attends the University of Ottawa medical school and tells his story of living, and succeeding, with a learning disability. We strongly recommend checking out the article here. Do you or someone you know have a learning disability?  Have you been able to overcome this challenge and succeed?  Let us know your story in the comments below!]]></description>
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		<title>Medical Schools Considering Shortening Curriculum</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/medical-schools-shorter-curriculum/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/medical-schools-shorter-curriculum/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:03:45 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://premedroadmap.com/?p=799</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[An article about medical school in Public Radio International recently caught our attention.  The author writes that New York University, along with a group of other medical schools will start offering select students the option of completing medical school in only three years, instead of the traditional four year curriculum. The article quotes Art Caplan, director of medical ethics at NYU. &#8221;You have two years of basic science at nearly every medical school. Then two years of clinical rotations; you dip into surgery, you see pediatrics, you get a sense of the different sub-specialties of medicine in the last two years,” he said. &#8220;If you can get that down maybe to a years worth of work and keep the clinical activities as they are, I think you&#8217;re going to be able to get the smartest and the best of the medical school class to push through — going summers, starting a little bit early in the three years,” he said. &#8220;It costs about $300,000 and more to get out of medical school given the tuition costs over four years,” he said. “If you can take some of that weight off the back of a medical student I think you&#8217;re going to see more people being able to go into a broader set of specialties.” &#8220;You&#8217;re probably talking about $60,000 in tuition, room and board and books and all the rest of it — saved out of that $300,000 cost,” he said. NYU will select about 10 percent of its incoming class to try out the new three-year curriculum.  The school will monitor those students and measure their success before deciding whether to expand the program.  One of the key measures of success will be whether those students are admitted to the residency programs they want to attend. While the program sounds good on the surface, we&#8217;re not convinced it is better for students in the long run.  One potential drawback will be preparation for the USMLE Step 1 exam, which extensively tests students&#8217; knowledge of the basic medical sciences learned in the first 2 years.  It remains to be seen if students who spend less time in those sciences can excel on the exam.  Another drawback is the added stress placed on students to start earlier and work through summers.  Medical students are already prone to burnout without this added burden.  We&#8217;re also skeptical of the claimed financial benefit.  If students will be required to start earlier and go through summers, will they still be able to reap the benefits of tuition savings?  We doubt the university will offer these extended sessions for students at no cost to them.  What are your thoughts on this new program?  Let us know in the comments below!]]></description>
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		<title>What type of premed are you?</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/type-premed-you/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/type-premed-you/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 15 Dec 2012 17:12:03 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.premedroadmap.com/?p=623</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Andy Liang, opinion editor of The Tech, a newspaper at MIT, recently wrote about stereotypes that premed students at his school face.  The article can be found here.  He writes that there are 2 types of premed students at his school: those who are relentlessly competitive and those who realize they are imperfect but challenge themselves to do their best. He writes that too often premeds fall under the competitive category.  They will work tirelessly to get a perfect GPA and cry after exams when they realize they might not have scored high enough to get an A.  Some will even go so far as to safeguard their notes and shun other students, believing that helping others will somehow ruin a curve and hurt their own grades. However, as Liang writes, many medical schools are doing everything they can to combat this type of attitude amongst their medical students.  Instead of having students compete, they are encouraging collaboration.  This is evidenced by the recent moves of many schools away from traditional grading systems and instead using Pass/Fail.  In addition, many medical schools are no longer ranking their students and have even put systems in place to make it easier for classmates to share notes. There are premed students who already think with this mindset.  They are more than willing to form study groups and share notes.  They look at difficult courses as a challenge that can only be overcome with collaboration.  They have a positive personality and a genuine interest in working hard to help others.  These are the types of students many medical schools want.  The students who can work effectively in teams, who can help their classmates to succeed and who make everyone around them better.  Unfortunately, these students seem to be the minority among premeds. Which type of student are you?  What can we do to break the ultra competitive mentality of many premeds?  How can we encourage collaboration and a welcoming environment?  Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!]]></description>
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		<title>What Obamacare Means for Medical Students</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/obamacare-means-medical-students/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Dec 2012 20:24:39 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.premedroadmap.com/?p=621</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The admissions consultants Veritas Prep recently wrote an article on US News about the pros and cons of Obamacare for medical students.  A link to the original article can be found at the bottom of this post.  Here&#8217;s our take on the article and what Obamacare means for you. With the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision to uphold the majority of the Affordable Care Act in June and with Obama winning re-election, the major portions of Obamacare are likely here to stay.  So what does that mean for medical students?  It&#8217;s nearly impossible to predict exactly how the implementation of the new law will play out, but there are a few things that are likely to happen: An emphasis on primary care.  The Affordable Care Act aims to increase the number of students going into primary care specialties (especially family medicine and internal medicine).  One way the law makes these specialties more attractive is by increasing reimbursements to those doctors.  Another way the law will help is by increasing scholarships and loan repayment programs for students interested in primary care.  We&#8217;ve already seen this happening and we wrote about it earlier here. More doctors.  It&#8217;s no secret that there is a shortage of doctors in this country.  Obamacare seeks to remedy this issue by increasing the number of doctors who train in the US.  There will be more medical schools being built and more students being accepted to current medical schools.  In fact, we&#8217;ve recently written about a new medical school breaking ground in Michigan. More competitive residencies.  This is definitely a potential con of the new law for medical students.  While there will be more medical students in the US, funding for residency programs (which are funded by Medicare) has not been increased.  In fact, there is a current debate about cutting some funding in order to balance the federal budget.  This means that there will be more students competing for the same number of slots, if not less. All in all, the new healthcare law is incredibly complex and it&#8217;s very hard to predict how everything will play out.  However, you should keep these things in mind when deciding whether to pursue a career in medicine! http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/medical-school-admissions-doctor/2012/12/03/weigh-obamacares-pros-cons-for-medical-students]]></description>
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		<title>Admissions Officers Support New MCAT</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/admissions-officers-support-mcat/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/admissions-officers-support-mcat/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 08 Dec 2012 18:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Admin</dc:creator>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.premedroadmap.com/?p=616</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[According to a recent article in the Harvard Crimson, nearly nine out of ten medical school admissions officers support the changes coming to the MCAT in 2015.  Of the notable changes coming to the exam, perhaps the most controversial is the addition of a new section on Behavioral Sciences.  This section will require students to have a knowledge of psychology and sociology.  In addition, the traditional science sections of the exam will require a greater understanding of biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology. “It is the right time, and it is a good step to take,” said Oona B. Ceder director of premedical and health career advising at Harvard University. “The MCAT is designed to help pre-meds prepare the kinds of skills and competencies that help them be more efficient and compassionate physicians,” she said. These changes make it necessary for pre-med students to take many more courses than they traditional would have to prepare for the MCAT.  However, if there is some consolation for students, they will no longer have to prepare for a Writing section. What are your feelings on the new MCAT?  Do you agree with the changes?  Will you need to change your schedule in order to be prepared?  Let us know in the comments below!]]></description>
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		<title>Residency Accreditation Groups Now Unified</title>
		<link>http://premedroadmap.com/residency-accreditation-groups-unified/</link>
		<comments>http://premedroadmap.com/residency-accreditation-groups-unified/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:06:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Admin</dc:creator>
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		<category><![CDATA[residency]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.premedroadmap.com/?p=609</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Beginning in July 2015, all residency programs in the US will be accredited by a single body.  Up until now, residency programs were either accredited by the American Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), or the American Osteopathic Association (AOA).  This system had long been confusing for students, physicians, and patients, as it was often difficult to distinguish competency expectations and residency match dates, among other things, from program to program. “It will simplify the graduate medical education system for the country,” said AACOM President and CEO Stephen Shannon, DO, MPH. “We are collaborating to develop the strongest possible system.” The new agreement calls for all residency programs to be accredited by the ACGME.  All AOA programs will become ACGME members and the plans are for the ACGME to absorb all current AOA employees.  The agreement allows for greater accountability among residency programs now that there will be uniform standards and competency expectations. “A unified accreditation system would provide greater opportunity for the AOA and ACGME to share best practices in training physicians, including the implementation of quality improvement programs and performance standards that emphasize positive results, which translates to better and more affordable health care for patients,” AOA president Dr. Ray E Stowers, DO said.]]></description>
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