3 Years of Med School Might Be Enough to Produce Quality Doctors

October 15, 2024
Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

It’s typically thought that medical school requires four years of study after graduating college.

But doctors might be able to shave a year off their medical education and still do a great job treating patients, a new study finds.

Graduates who took three years of medical school performed equally well on tests of skill and knowledge as peers who attended a four-year program, researchers reported Oct. 14 in the journal Academic Medicine.

“Our findings suggest that accelerated curriculums offer an efficient, cost-effective way to prepare medical students for the next stage of training without compromising on the quality,” said senior researcher Dr. Joan Cangiarella, a professor of pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.

For this study, researchers analyzed data on students who graduated from NYU’s accelerated program between 2016 and 2022 and those who graduated from the standard four-year track between 2017 and 2023.

Specifically, researchers compared test scores of 136 three-year accelerated graduates against those of 681 four-year medical graduates

The three-year students earned an average score of 84% on exams evaluating their grasp of topics like anatomy, cell biology and biochemistry.

By comparison, their four-year counterparts scored 83%, on average.

Both groups also had similar marks on exams testing medical knowledge, clinical skills, critical thinking and communication.

Medical students tend to spend much of their fourth year figuring out what specialty to pursue, by taking electives in areas like surgery, orthopedics or otolaryngology, researchers said.

The fast-track option has been developed for students who already have chosen their specialty and want to hit the ground running, Cangiarella said.

These accelerated students learn the same core curriculum as four-year students, and also receive research opportunities and individualized mentorship from faculty members in their chosen specialty, she said.

Provided they perform well, the three-year students have a direct pathway to a residency at NYU Langone Health or another medical school with a similar acceleration program.

“Accelerated medical-school paths not only benefit students by saving a year of tuition and by enabling an extra year of earnings, they also provide residencies with trainees who are tailor-made for them,” researcher Dr. Steven Abramson, chair of medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a news release.

These results have led to a major shake-up of the NYU medical curriculum, researcher Dr. Elisabeth Cohen, vice chair for academic affairs in ophthalmology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a school news release.

“As of 2023, we now enable all students to graduate in three years if they choose, whether they proceed directly to a residency here or get matched elsewhere,” Cohen said.

Graduates of the accelerated program did earn lower scores on parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam taken during medical school, likely because they had less time to study and had a direct pathway to a residency, researchers noted.

However, the three-year graduates performed just as well as their four-year counterparts on the part of the exam that’s taken at the end of the first year of residency, results showed.

More information

The Association of American Medical Colleges has more on what to expect at medical school.

SOURCE: NYU Langone Health, news release, Oct. 15, 2024

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