Are you interested in knowing how long is medical school? Well, the short and simpler answer is four years.
However, medical school is a broad-term, and depending on the profession that you choose, your education might take as long as 8 years for a simple degree.
In this article, we will cover how long the basis of medical school takes, and how it looks like.
So keep reading to learn more.
A Brief Look At How Long Is Medical School
It all starts with getting accepted to the school. In your first and second year, you will spend the majority of your time in class. You will be learning about the foundations of medicine via the study of physiology, pathology, anatomy, and much more.
Because of the verboseness of this information, it’s considered very daunting. But the medical education gets easier the further you’re into it. Your only summer break will occur between the first and second year, and that’s your last one.
In the third and fourth years, you will be in a clinical setting. You will have to attend meetings, and fellow residents to learn about their trade. You will also be asked a lot of questions, many of which you will get wrong. The rotations will go through the various medical fields, so you will get a taste of all the fields before choosing a field that you are interested in the most.
After graduation, you are a doctor. However, you are not able to practice medicine, until you have completed a residency. If you are choosing General medicine, you will finish in an additional 3 years. If you choose something like surgery, it might take 7 years.
An In-Depth Look At Foundational Medical Education
As mentioned earlier, medical education is four years long, and it’s broken into the pre-clinical and clinical phases. The first two years being pre-clinical, and the latter clinical, but you already know this.
In premise, the medical education structure will vary school by school. Some will focus on a topic for a month before moving on. Some will make you focus on several courses all at once over a lengthy period of time.
The First & Second Years
As a MS-1, your first year will be the most difficult. During this year, you will be spending lots of time reading textbooks and listening to lectures. You will learn about microbiology, chemistry, pharmacology, anatomy, and much more. These will be very similar to a general undergrad class of any residence. However, healthcare schools involve about 20 hours of lecture work each week.
You will also spend some time in the lab with hands-on practice, but it won’t last long, even though you will cover the basics of patient examination and medical history recording.
As an MS-2, your second year of school will prepare you for your United States Medical Licensing Examination. This is three-step exam that is required to be taken by all students who want to display an understanding of medical concepts. Most choose to take this exam towards the end of the second year before they take on clerkship.
This year, you will spend time learning about specific fields of medicine, thus leading you to the clerkship that will put you up close and personal with those fields in a clinical setting, mostly hospitals.
The Third & Fourth Years
After passing your first step of the licensing examination, you will begin your rotations in clinics and hospitals. While doing this, you will be helping residents in their specialists, such as psychiatry, internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery. You will learn about patient interaction and perform general procedures.
The time that you will spend in each rotation will depend on the focus and strength of the clinic/hospital. For instance, some medical educations require you take spend months in surgery, whereas others only a week.
During your rations, you will also attend classes. The third-year is focused on the foundation of medical specialty, and you will also prepare for the second part of the exam. This will be taken at the end of the year, and it covers the knowledge you have acquired during your rotation, including interpersonal skills and clinical awareness.
In your fourth year, you will still be on rotation. However, some students select electives that fit their long-term goals, which helps them strengthen their resume for residencies.
This year, you will also prepare your applications for residency. They are typically in early September, and the programs begin application acquisition in the middle of the same month. Interviews will be done in October to February, and the programs will submit their rankings on applicants as they see fit.
After this, applicants will be matched via a computer algorithm. In March, a Match Day ceremony is held that provides students with envelopes in which they learn about the residency they have been chosen for, and where they will spend several years of life to complete it.
Medical School Explained
Now that you have learned about how long is medical school, you are well on your way to determining if its the right course of action for your life. There’s a reason it takes so long, and that’s because medical students have to blossom into fully-capable medical specialists. Otherwise, the health system would be completely reliant on incompetent generalized candidates who could harm and deteriorate the function of society.
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