New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Clears Medical Students To Work As Doctors During Coronavirus Emergency
Students who would have graduated this spring can start practicing medicine immediately.
Medical students who would have graduated this spring can start practicing medicine immediately in order to help mitigate New York's coronavirus crisis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Saturday.
"I will be signing an Executive Order to allow medical students who were slated to graduate this spring to begin practicing now," Cuomo tweeted. "These are extraordinary times and New York needs the help."
He's right, and this is a great idea. Medical students who are weeks away from graduating already having everything they need to work as doctors except their diplomas. They should be able to put their skills and knowledge to use during this a public health crisis.
Combatting COVID-19 has meant doing away with countless regulations, restrictions, and credentialing systems that stood in the way of people getting the health care, equipment, food, and other vital supplies that they need. Some of these reforms (like letting students practice medicine) will probably be temporary, but we should think long and hard before reflexively restoring other policies once the crisis has passed. The pointless restrictions on gay and bisexual blood donors, the federal limits on mask manufacturers, the system of overcriminalization that crowds the jails—these are just a few of the bad ideas that should stay dead.
As New York calls upon medical students to help with the crisis, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the case of a former Michigan State University medical student who was expelled shortly before graduation, following a Kafkaesque sexual misconduct investigation and quasi-judicial trial. I presume the state of Michigan needs more doctors, too.
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But surely this move will kill citizens by the thousands!
Otherwise why are there so many safety related rules and regulations?
Surely the need for closely supervised residency years was not a lie!
Is “the system” wrong now in this panic induced madness, or has it been wrong all these years?
I wonder – – – – – – – –
It will be an interesting twist to any future malpractice suit.
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It’s an emergency, you slack-jawed bigot.
Only if you’re a fatass or in a nursing home, you slope-foreheaded hicklib.
Lefties are scared shitless of this KingFlu.
The World has not ended based on lies from the media and they know there will be a reckoning.
As usual, Red Rocks, competent adults — especially educated, modern, skilled, reasoning citizens in the mainstream — will address the problem while anti-social misfits like you will occupy the customary position of muttering bitterly and ranting inconsequentially from the fringe.
As usual, the hicklib burps out one of his 10 pre-programmed phrases while he hides from the coof like a baby-back bitch.
Pandemic management pointers from slack-jawed culture war casualties are always entertaining.
Even Republican governors and whoever is pulling Trump’s strings recognize that this is an emergency . . . but faux libertarian commenters are still defending the deadender fort.
The thing is bro… You lost. You panicked and now it’s obvious. Some R governors also doing some political ass covering doesn’t change that.
Arthur L. Hicklib burps out another pre-programmed NPC response, as well as invoking “MUH REPUBLICAN GUVNAHS” as if their hysteria should be considered legit.
“while anti-social misfits like you will occupy the customary position of muttering bitterly and ranting inconsequentially from the fringe.“
. . . Ummm. Hehe.
+100
Still have to be trained in real medicine, Robby. A degree is only a step in the right direction. More than one intern cannot perform basic medical procedures until they are shown how repeatedly. This is not libertarian fantasy land where every human can perform any task a la Heinlein.
Yeah! It’s not like they’ve been working for the last couple years as student doctors, Robby.
Actually, in the current state of accredited medical education, *NO* students in an MD program do *NOT* “work the last couple of years as student doctors”. Maybe 30 years ago that was true, but concerns about liability and worry by hospitals and medical schools that supervised hands-on work by the students that actually affects the patient’s care (a) crosses the line into the unauthorized practice of medicine and (b) may render the physician and hospital liable for “false claims” because physicians generally are not permitted to submit bills for work done by someone not in their employ.
In most programs, med students spend the third (“M3”) year experiencing “core clerkships, where the skills tested are interviewing patients, doing a *non-invasive* physical exam, and making a preliminary diagnosis (that they tell the superising physician–possibly after the supervising physician has made the real diagnosis and prescribed treatment) and being able to articulate diagnostic reasoning. The fourth (M4) year is spent on even less structured (generally clinical) one-month electives, most of which are designed to get the student into a residency (specialty training) program. Residency (starting with PGY1s/interns is where the *graduates* with their shiny new MD degrees commonly get to have a limited amount of autonomy. Again, it was different 30 years ago . . .
I’m not defending the status quo, but these students (who, if they are like the med students in my college, REALLY WANT TO HELP) are not the equivalent of a real doctor. Given the rise in morbidity and mortality every July (when med students start their residencies), I’d be cautious
So I imagined working as a lab tech for a student doctor clinic then?
I imagined them seeing patients?
Oh, no imagination needed–they *definitely* “see patients”. What they DON’T do (for the past 30 years of my association with academic medical centers/med schools, first as in-house counsel and now as an assistant dean) is independently treat patients. The students go in and interview the patient. Then they discuss the case with the teaching physician or they present the case to the teaching physician in front of the patient (to demonstrate they did the interview or non-invasive physical exam correctly). Then THE ACTUAL DOCTOR treats the patient.
Yup.
I can’t see how the role of medical students can change in any meaningful way. They already can do history, basic exam, write up cases in the record, learn some procedures, all that but it has to be supervised and signed off by at least a resident.
But they won’t be trained in real medicine; they will be trained to act as clerks for the Medicare and insurance companies.
All they have done lately is read me questions off a laptop screen, incorrectly order refills on medications, and post “visit summaries” describing things that never happened, but meet the requirements to get paid.
I even have one summary stating withing three sentences we discussed a next appointment in both 3 and 6 months time.
They may not be ready for a full-fledged practice, but they’re better than nothing. It beats having them sit home watching Netflix
^^^^^ This. Big-time. NY (and NYC) has nothing to lose, at this point.
Of course, we should realize they are only licensed to ‘practice’ medicine, not to really ‘do’ medicine.
As long as they are just practicing, how much harm can they do?
It’s well established that new residents cause mistakes and end up killing more patients. It’s important to monitor them closely and supervise their work. Perhaps pushing lots of new people into an already overloaded system isn’t the best idea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743809/
Shit, even seasoned practitioners kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands every year through medical errors.
What do you call the person that graduates med school with the lowest grades? Doctor.
What do you call a sub-IQ dumbshit who responds with tedious irrelevancies? Chipper Morning Wood.
I post a comment that’s a joke that’s basically agreeing with you and you respond with utter rage and personal attacks. I think you need to do some soul searching, brother.
Your jokes suck, so what are you crying about?
Ok, noted, you are a dick. But we all already new that. Some people are lost causes, too deep into their own shit and suffering. I do feel sorry for you, though.
“Some people are lost causes, too deep into their own shit and suffering”
No one cares about your problems guy.
unreason just wants to lighten the mood in between their sock troll personal attacks. yeah.
Now maybe he can get around to making hydroxychloroquine available to patients outside of hospitals.
Crazy talk!
“As New York calls upon medical students to help with the crisis, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the case of a former Michigan State University medical student who was expelled shortly before graduation, following a Kafkaesque sexual misconduct investigation and quasi-judicial trial. I presume the state of Michigan needs more doctors, too.”
If this were a Hollywood movie, he’d do some unauthorized medicine, save some lives, and triumph in the end.
No, I’m not giving Hollywood enough credit – there would be car chases and explosions, too.
…and I suppose they’d have to make it a murder charge, not a sexual misconduct charge.
“I didn’t kill my wife!”
“I don’t care!”
Medical schools ‘graduating’ students early because of COVID is a big fat lazy cop out. It’s as if the medical schools can’t find a single thing to teach at this time…
In reality the schools are afraid should students catch COVID, and the potential liability. Better to close all teaching, call them graduates, and sever that liability link.
In a better world, every medical school right now would have 1000 ‘ventilators’. That is, the students could squeeze the manual breathing bag of for any patient who lacks immediate access to a breathing machine. But can’t have students (22-26 year old adults) in harm’s way thinks medical administrators.
An interesting trend in medical education is that some medical schools are allowing students to graduate after three years IF they enter the university’s residency programs.
Why not allow medical device manufacturers and suppliers to sell direct over the net. And speed up FDA approval for such things as masks and other critical needs for US manufacturers.
Speed up approvals? The FDA doesn’t have a procedure for that, and procedures must be followed.
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It is an uncomfortable reality that the 4th year of medical school is largely a waste, where no education happens for most. 18 months of clinical clerkships are all that are required, with 12 or so being core rotations (surgery, medicine, psychiatry, pediatrics, ob/gyn), and the rest are selected by the student to meet more vague aims, such as public health and primary care. Because the 3d year begins in June, immediately following completion of the pre-clinical years (classroom lecture and labs), they can be done as early as January to goof around.
But, yeah, a student turned doctor is worth exactly nothing. In all states they need a minimum of a year training, observation, and assessment, the internship, before they can even have an unrestricted license. Before that, they are practicing under my license, an incentive for me to watch like a hawk. While I am in academic clinical medicine because I like the enthusiasm and energy of the new trainees, the reality is they only double my work (or halve the clinical care I can actually provide.)
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Meanwhile medical staff ta many rural hospitals hardly have any patients to keep the company afloat. People are scared to go to the rural hospitals even if they have zero Wuhanvirus impatient. “Elective” surgeries are mostly canceled. Its a bloodbath to these rural hospital’s bottomline because state governments and media created a hysteria.
You sound like Republican governor of Florida — right before he caved and gave us the DeSantis Denouement. Or like the Republican governor of Georgia — until he folded with the Kemp Capitulation. Or like most hapless societal rejects whining from the sidelines about how their betters are recognizing and handling a pandemic.
Cowardly poltical calculations are your prooooooof that you’re right?
Ahahahahaha no no go with that hahhhhhahahah
Georgia is not on lockdown. The scared pussies in government might be in lockdown. I had a big party with over 50 people. I was driving around this morning. Georgians are at the beach.
Uh huh. You had a big party, you also were refueling your multiple apc’s last week, you have made a ton of money off of stocks, even though you claimed you were on a buying streak the day prior to the beginning of a 30% drop, you also make too much money to get any trump bucks, which is pretty much impossible with the combination of sba programs available now for real employers, and you somehow accomplish all this while commenting all day every day here.
You are completely full of shit.
Does that guy periodically claim to be a lawyer?
Ahahahaha you lost bitch ahahaha you shit your pants and now you have to jistify it ahahahahaj
Poor unreason sock trolls. They dont know about buying stocks as they get cheaper. Or buying extra diesel as its price goes down. Or how to multitask.
No wonder unreason is circling the drain,
There should be no “Coronavirus Emergency”. Its hysteria designed to destroy the American way of life.
9,132 American dead out of 321,762 confirmed cases and millions more infected who were never tested.
<2.8% death rate.
Don't let hysterical Lefties destroy the USA.
Open wider, clinger. Your betters will achieve more progress . . . and you will swallow and comply, just like always.
You ran scared from a cold bro.
Poor unreason. Burned through so many sock trolls, you guys are back to Artlib?