Crap Teaching of T1DM in Med School
This is about as relevant of a post as I have ever done. Hopefully this will help some people understand where their doctors are coming from when they don't know everything/anything about diabetes or diabetes management.
http://diabeticallymindnumbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/crap-teaching-o...
One of the things that pisses me off the most about medical school is when professors completely phone it in. It doesn't take that much effort to make up your own questions or use a USMLE Step-1 question bank to get applicable questions. When you copy the text directly from the book and use their horrible examples, you are doing us no favors. Most of the time we've already seen all of that from pre-reading and by the time you've finished with the case history we are 7 posts in to Facebook.
The other major thing is when you obviously present us with wrong information and then fail to attempt to correct it. In the T1DM community there is a lot of dissent toward their doctors. They feel that the doctors are incompetent at understanding the disease and are less than worthless at helping them better control their disease. This comes a lot from the fact that the doctors don't know what it's like. Doctors are told what the symptoms are and how to manage them, but unlike the flu or a cold they don't know what it's like. They can never understand the stress that comes with worrying about your blood sugar or the numb brain that comes with super lows or the hatred of your own body when you have a random spike.
As a medical student I want to help people, but I can only help people when you teach us the correct information. If you teach us wrong, or make the disease seem as something less than it is you are doing us a disservice. The following is a picture of one of the slides from a recent lecture. Please don't try to punch the computer screen...
Click the link above for the picture and the rest of the post about what I'm doing in response to this information.
SuFu
Edit 1 - I have written a 2nd post about this topic to try and explain a few more things. See the comment below.
http://diabeticallymindnumbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/crap-teaching-i...
http://diabeticallymindnumbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/crap-teaching-o...
One of the things that pisses me off the most about medical school is when professors completely phone it in. It doesn't take that much effort to make up your own questions or use a USMLE Step-1 question bank to get applicable questions. When you copy the text directly from the book and use their horrible examples, you are doing us no favors. Most of the time we've already seen all of that from pre-reading and by the time you've finished with the case history we are 7 posts in to Facebook.
The other major thing is when you obviously present us with wrong information and then fail to attempt to correct it. In the T1DM community there is a lot of dissent toward their doctors. They feel that the doctors are incompetent at understanding the disease and are less than worthless at helping them better control their disease. This comes a lot from the fact that the doctors don't know what it's like. Doctors are told what the symptoms are and how to manage them, but unlike the flu or a cold they don't know what it's like. They can never understand the stress that comes with worrying about your blood sugar or the numb brain that comes with super lows or the hatred of your own body when you have a random spike.
As a medical student I want to help people, but I can only help people when you teach us the correct information. If you teach us wrong, or make the disease seem as something less than it is you are doing us a disservice. The following is a picture of one of the slides from a recent lecture. Please don't try to punch the computer screen...
Click the link above for the picture and the rest of the post about what I'm doing in response to this information.
SuFu
Edit 1 - I have written a 2nd post about this topic to try and explain a few more things. See the comment below.
http://diabeticallymindnumbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/crap-teaching-i...
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Comment by Gerri on October 14, 2011 at 11:04pm -
Applause for your proactive efforts to educate your fellow students & professors! Indeed, what misinformation about other conditions & diseases is being taught?
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Comment by jrtpup on October 14, 2011 at 11:43pm -
Gerri, you probably don't want to know. From what I understand nutrition is barely touched upon.
Thanks for taking this on Sufu!
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Comment by Gerri on October 14, 2011 at 11:48pm
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No doubt nutrition is an after-thought, if a thought at all.
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Comment by tmana on October 15, 2011 at 12:19am -
It's not unusual for textbooks to be out of date, but the information on that page is more than a decade out of date (possibly even two decades)!
Do we, as engaged, educated patients, need to create companion texts and follow-alongs for doctors-to-be?
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Comment by SuFu, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011 at 7:21am -
I wrote an updated post about the one above. I wrote that blog post in my 8th straight hour of studying for the upcoming metabolism test and forgot a few things. Hope you enjoy.
http://diabeticallymindnumbing.blogspot.com/2011/10/crap-teaching-i...
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Comment by SuFu, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011 at 7:52am
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tmana - I don't think so. This is first year medical school and we are completely and utterly inundated with stuff already. I can tell you from personal experience that when we have professors bring in supplemental material or clinical correlations bring in pamphlets and such they inevitably end up either in the bottom of the backpack and then in the trash, or directly into the trash. All we care about right now is passing the classes. I think 3rd and 4th year is when we get a better understanding of disease management, but it would be nice to get the correct information in early in our medical careers so that we don't get the wrong ideas early on. Thanks for reading!
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Comment by SuFu, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011 at 7:53am
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Gerri - Nutrition is a joke, atleast at my school. Someone submitted my diet and they railed for 30 minutes about how I'll get fat, develop diabetes (T2) and go into renal failure. When they were done I stood up ran them down the rails. The major problem is that we're taught by a bunch of idiot nutritionists rather than physicians.
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Comment by acidrock23 on October 15, 2011 at 8:04am -
I wish you had a video of your close encounter of the nutritionist kind.
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Comment by SuFu, Ph.D. on October 15, 2011 at 8:08am
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It was really amusing because during the presentation everyone kept turning around and looking at me in the back row. I was scribbling notes, arguments and just straight hatred into a notebook so I wouldn't forget anything. When I stood up and told them my diet, that I'm a T1DM and have an A1C of 4.9 they just stammered. Then I launched into how their diet plans are what are causing the problems and feeding diabetics high carb diets won't do them any good, how your understanding of basic science is pathetic and your job could be covered by a pamphlet. I though my course director was going to have a heart attack. Then again everyone knows I really don't care if I piss people off. If they are wrong I'll call them out on it and be bluntly honest.
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Comment by Gerri on October 15, 2011 at 8:12am
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Good for you! Wish I had been there.
Comment
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