DID SURGEONS Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter need to pass a centralized licensure exam to make Gray’s Anatomy?
Gray’s Anatomy, published in 1858, is still the standard of anatomical texts until today.
Did Louis Pasteur, who has literally saved hundreds of millions of lives with his discovery of vaccination, pass a licensure exam?
Did Dr. Alexander Fleming, for his discovery of Penicillin, thus ushering the age of antibiotics?
The plain truth is that the physicians of the past were every bit as competent as those of today. Yet there was no centralized licensure exam for more than 2,000 years, as far back as the profession of physician came into being.
Moreover, taken to the extreme, centralized exams can be abused to form cartels that just jack up the prices. (Especially so-called specialty societies.)
Notice, too, that a medical student’s score in the licensure exams has practically no correlation to his being a good doctor or a successful one. Eventually, it boils down to his knowledge, skills, competence, just the attributes that essentially makes one a physician (and certainly not answering a series of questions which is what licensure exams are).
What should we do?
Just go back to the old tried and tested system. A student that wants to be a doctor enters a college that has a school of Medicine course. He is taught by recognized doctors in classes. He trains under them in some form of clerkship and internship in order to accumulate practical experience.
Eventually, the college and his mentors declare (perhaps through a written certificate) that he is a competent doctor. His mentors are in the best place to attest for his knowledge, skills, and competence. Not six or seven people who make a series of questions hundreds of kilometers away whom he does not know and who do not know him.
If the new doctor decides to specialize, he can then train under other physicians skilled in the specialty that he wants. Eventually, these physicians can declare the (former) newbie to be skilled in so and so specialty or specialties.
Ideally, a doctor can make a list of things that he can competently do, and post it outside his clinic. Again, no need for a centralized exam that only acts as a cordon sanitaire, fosters cartels, and jacks up prices for medical care.
Fortunately, we are not talking about nuclear engineers or nuclear reactors, else Kaboom! An explosion or a meltdown. Another Chernobyl or Fukushima in the making. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
