fossildoc
09-22-2007, 11:44 PM
Every med school has its problems. This is inevitable when you have a large heterogeneous study body and a competitive business struggling to survive in a fluid regulatory environment.
The ideal medical school ("IMS") would regularly solicit complaints from its students with the intention of rabidly (yes, rabidly) acting on them to gradually sculpt a learning environment that would make us all proud.
Wouldn't you be pleased as punch (that's an old campaign saying of Hubert Humphrey -- who lost) to see, say, a ninety percent action rate by the administration on the complaint list? I know I would; after all, the school can't always do everything the students want. Ninety percent is more than we'd ever get from state or local governments, it's way higher than the Step 1 passing score, and it's five times greater than the percentage of games I can win in Spider Solitaire, Medium Level.
Okay, here's an example. Let's say the following gripes represent the collective complaints of the student body:
(Disclaimer: the following list is fictional. Any resemblance to real schools is strictly coincidental.)
1. There's a burned-out light in the first floor men's room.
2. The library books are out of numerical order.
3. The second floor air conditioner makes too much noise.
4. The cafeteria food does not satisfy the needs of the students.
5. The parking spaces behind the school need to be repainted.
6. The pressure in the fire extinguishers is too low.
7. There's a broken chair in the histology lab.
8. The drapes in the neurology lecture hall are missing hooks.
9. The hinges on most of the classroom doors squeak.
10. There are hostile and incompetent teachers driving us to depression.
The administration of our IMS rushes to the rescue. After all, a school's cheapest and most effective advertisement is its current and former students, so they aim to please -- but without sacrificing academic standards or caving to whimsical demands, of course.
A repairperson is summoned. S/he replaces the burned-out light, replaces the ancient air-conditioner with a modern silent (and much more energy efficient) one, repaints the parking spaces, repressurizes the fire extinguishers, fixes the broken chair in the histology lab, replaces missing drapery hooks, and oils the hinges.
Wow! That's a lot for one person. Not yet satisfied with its own performance, the adminstration continues. A professional librarian from the local library is pressed into service; those books are not only arranged numerically, but are actually cataloged -- on line, no less.
And just when you think the administration has had just about enough of our complaints, they go the extra mile: a real nutritionist familiar with the culinary tastes of the culturally heterogeneous student body is brought in and rearranges the entire cafeteria menu.
Okay, where are we now? Ninety percent! That's right; the IMS has lived up to its reputation and rectified ninety percent of the student complaints. What a school!
I know I speak for all of us when I say we would all be proud to belong to such a school.
Right?
The ideal medical school ("IMS") would regularly solicit complaints from its students with the intention of rabidly (yes, rabidly) acting on them to gradually sculpt a learning environment that would make us all proud.
Wouldn't you be pleased as punch (that's an old campaign saying of Hubert Humphrey -- who lost) to see, say, a ninety percent action rate by the administration on the complaint list? I know I would; after all, the school can't always do everything the students want. Ninety percent is more than we'd ever get from state or local governments, it's way higher than the Step 1 passing score, and it's five times greater than the percentage of games I can win in Spider Solitaire, Medium Level.
Okay, here's an example. Let's say the following gripes represent the collective complaints of the student body:
(Disclaimer: the following list is fictional. Any resemblance to real schools is strictly coincidental.)
1. There's a burned-out light in the first floor men's room.
2. The library books are out of numerical order.
3. The second floor air conditioner makes too much noise.
4. The cafeteria food does not satisfy the needs of the students.
5. The parking spaces behind the school need to be repainted.
6. The pressure in the fire extinguishers is too low.
7. There's a broken chair in the histology lab.
8. The drapes in the neurology lecture hall are missing hooks.
9. The hinges on most of the classroom doors squeak.
10. There are hostile and incompetent teachers driving us to depression.
The administration of our IMS rushes to the rescue. After all, a school's cheapest and most effective advertisement is its current and former students, so they aim to please -- but without sacrificing academic standards or caving to whimsical demands, of course.
A repairperson is summoned. S/he replaces the burned-out light, replaces the ancient air-conditioner with a modern silent (and much more energy efficient) one, repaints the parking spaces, repressurizes the fire extinguishers, fixes the broken chair in the histology lab, replaces missing drapery hooks, and oils the hinges.
Wow! That's a lot for one person. Not yet satisfied with its own performance, the adminstration continues. A professional librarian from the local library is pressed into service; those books are not only arranged numerically, but are actually cataloged -- on line, no less.
And just when you think the administration has had just about enough of our complaints, they go the extra mile: a real nutritionist familiar with the culinary tastes of the culturally heterogeneous student body is brought in and rearranges the entire cafeteria menu.
Okay, where are we now? Ninety percent! That's right; the IMS has lived up to its reputation and rectified ninety percent of the student complaints. What a school!
I know I speak for all of us when I say we would all be proud to belong to such a school.
Right?