That was the under tone of my previous post. I have been thinking about this as I bought supplies and packed/planned for my upcoming trip to recon the island firsthand. Some of the more popular reasons to not do it are:
1. You'll never go to Harvard.
The idea behind this assertion is that by going to a school with such lowly prestige you will never go to Harvard or Johns Hopkins for a residency. It does bear mentioning that one Ross alumn went on to a Psych residency at Yale to be followed by a faculty position at Yale, but lets face it that is such an incredible long shot. I think this presumption is laughable. If I was actually in a position where Harvard or Johns Hopkins was even remotely possible, I wouldn't be looking at D.O. schools mush less Caribbean ones. Maybe I can kick so much ass in med school that I rise from the ashes of my undergrad days, but I can live the rest of my life perfectly happily without gracing the hallowed halls of the ivy league.
2. You'll never do neurosurgery.
I never liked neuro, and from a man who used to hold livers and hearts during surgery: SURGERY IS BORING! Every surgeon I scrubbed with did the same thing day in and day out. Far too repetitive for me. This point is similar to number one. Many people I've spoken with either in person or on the internet boo-hoo the school because supposedly all Ross University alumni need to be Tier 1 even for what are considered "less competitive residencies". This point underscores exactly what is wrong with medicine. Look at what are regarded as the most competitive residencies: Dermatology, Opthamology, Radiology. I have nothing against these, but they are specialties where you make 300k a year working on your own schedule and very little if any on-call time. Internist put in a full day, then GO BACK to the hospital for night rounds and make 1/3 of what these specialists do. The physician work force needs grunts. It is not glamorous. Dr. McDreamy is a neurosurgeon, Dr. House is, well let's be honest every specialty on the planet. You won't see a T.V. show about a primary care physician. It is just not sexy enough, but it is essential in real life. Lance Armstong may have had a surgeon save his life by removing his testicle and metastisized tumor, but it was Lance's PCP that said "This is a problem, we need a biopsy."
3. You won't be able to practice in XYZ state.
This is just blatantly not true. As it stands now all four states that accredit medical school have accredited Ross University, allowing their graduates to practice all over America and the world.
4. It has a bad reputation.
This seems to be true, but it depends on who you ask. In the 1970s the AMA forbid the development of new medical schools and capped the number of students each school was allowed to enroll. The fear at the time was that there would be too many doctors. As a result, many medical schools opened off-shore witht he purpose of providing a back-door for students who wanted to practice in the states. Fast forward 40 years: The population has lived longer than previously hypothesized and many physicians retired much earlier than expected. This all results in America neededing something like 90,000 Doctors by 2020 (depending on which "think-tank" you read). So yes Carribbean schools as a whole have a bad reputationd due to the fact that many do not operate without oversight or standards of any kind. There are some papers in pubmed which show that some schools like Ross, SGU and AUC have excelled at attracting otherwise qualified students and giving them a chance to become capable doctors that practice in the states. Many other Carib. medical schools are shady bridges-to-nowhere. Sadly Ross has been lumped in with these. Leading to another point:
5. It is owned by DeVry.
Yes, this bugs me. I'm not sure that it should. Given the need for physicians and the complete imbalance of the number of people who want to put in the time and earn the right to practice medicine and the number of seats in medical school, I am not surprised a for-profit system has opened. In a free market if you can do something better or fill a niche, you go for it. Still, DeVry makes it sound cheesy. Like all the latenight commercials for people who want a fly-by-night degree to put on their resume's so they can be court reporters, gunsmiths or whatever. This adds to the afore mentioned stigma. If you look into it though, Dr. Ross sold the school to DeVry, so it is not like it was a corporate conglomerate endeavor to begin with. It is a for-profit school, which the AMA says it will not sanction. This is surprising because schools like Rocky Vista are American based medical schools which operate on a for-profit basis and they seem to have no problems with accreditation.
I am in Puerto Rico now and will return from the recon mission tomorrow. You'll get the low-down of my analysis as soon as I have a cogent post.
