(1) You state: “Maybe the solution here isn’t making a medical school’s curriculum require tacking on additional degrees, such as the Mayo Medical School, in the path of becoming a doctor. Medical students are already going to be in school for eight years, before they can even practice medicine. Do they really need an additional year to complete another degree before they can practice?”

You also state: “Medical students are already going to be in school for eight years, before they can even practice medicine. Do they really need an additional year to complete another degree before they can practice?”

Your statements are inaccurate. The Mayo-Cronkite fellowship at the Mayo Medical School is optional for students in that school. It is not required, as you state in your editorial.

Med students at Mayo may choose to apply to the Mayo-Cronkite fellowship, but they have to meet the entrance requirements and acceptance is not guaranteed. The Mayo-Cronkite fellowship will be just one of many such options available to students. And they are indeed options, not requirements. Please see the Mayo Medical School website at http://www.mayo.edu/mms/academic-enrichment.html.

(2) You state: “Students should be assigned to complete research in one particular area under a mentor. After a student finishes their research, the mentor can teach them how to write research papers for medical journals.”

Again, your statement is misleading and inaccurate. At UNM, med students are paired with a research mentor during their first year. The mentor provides guidance to students, throughout their entire four years of medical school, on the process of preparing a research article for professional conferences or publication in a medical journal. For you to imply that UNM medical students have no mentor or no access to guidance on research and publication is simply wrong. Research curricula similar to UNM’s are common at medical schools across the country.

(3) You state: “Students aren’t educated on completing research, teaching and receiving clinical service experience. But doctors must show excellence in two of these three categories and be competent in the third to be promoted in their field.”

You also state: “Students should be taught in medical school, not only about the human anatomy and physiology and pharmacology, but how to teach, research and receive clinical service experience.”

UNM medical students undergo clinical service in health care facilities at UNM and around the state of New Mexico throughout their four years in the School of Medicine. They do, in fact, participate in “clinical service experience” as part of their education, under the supervision of licensed physicians. For you to suggest otherwise is inaccurate and misleading. It also betrays an ignorance of medical education so immense as to be almost beyond belief. Your statement is roughly the equivalent of criticizing a university math department for not training students in algebra and calculus when, in fact, all math departments routinely offer precisely such training.

(4) Your article makes fundamental, egregious factual errors on all of the above points. On the basis of such inaccurate, misleading information, you criticize the alleged inadequacy of medical education, not just at the Mayo Medical School but (it would seem) everywhere in the United States. Since your criticisms are based on inaccurate information, they are not valid. It simply isn’t true that medical students, at UNM or elsewhere, are not trained in research or do not receive training in clinical care. Nor is it true that medical students at the Mayo Medical School are required to take a year off from medical school to receive training in journalism.

(5) You use quotations from Dr. Deborah Helitzer of the University of New Mexico in a misleading and inaccurate fashion. You suggest that her remarks apply to women in medical school. In fact, they apply only to women who hold faculty positions in medical schools.

Dr. Helitzer’s remarks to you, as published in The Daily Lobo on December 14, 2009 (http://www.dailylobo.com/index.php/article/2009/12/threeyear_study_analyzes_women_teaching_medicine), concern a study by Dr. Helitzer of three professional development programs for women working as faculty members in medical schools. You can learn about these programs on the web; for example: http://www.aamc.org/meetings/wim/ewim2010/start.htm. A few minutes’ investigation clearly shows that the programs being investigated by Dr. Helitzer are not concerned with the situation of women as medical students but as faculty members. Medical students and faculty members are two very different things.

Yet in your March 10 editorial in the Daily Lobo, you depict Dr. Helitzer’s remarks as applying to women who are medical students. You use her statements to support your assertion that “[s]tudents aren’t educated on completing research, teaching and receiving clinical service experience.” Dr. Helitzer did not in any way support your assertion. She was making a point about the training that medical school faculty members receive to teach medical students. She was not referring to the preparation that medical students receive for their career as physicians practicing medicine on human beings. The two things are very different.

You either don’t understand that difference, or you didn’t understand Dr. Helitzer’s original remarks, or you are deliberately using them in a fashion other than what she intended.

(6) The failings of your article suggest extraordinary sloppiness in both research and writing. The errors you make could have been corrected by phone calls to medical education professionals and by careful reading of web sites related to medical education. You are the managing editor of The Daily Lobo, yet you have written an editorial which constitutes an egregious breach of professionalism in every way. You should seriously contemplate the implications of such a failure at this advanced stage of your journalistic career.

In terms of teaching, how is that relevant to medical students? Maybe if they want to go into academic medicine, but they get that training in residency at a teaching hospital (i.e. the residents here are at a teaching hospital where residents and faculty are required to teach and train medical students). Students are also required to do tutorials, which is like group learning, where some students present and teach their peers. Also, in the students’ clinical years, students may present their findings of a case to other students, faculty, and residents. That could also be considered teaching.

Please check your facts before you made such obsurd accusations. It’s so easy to call the Undergraduate Medical Education office or Student Services at the medical school or check their website so that you can see their curriculum. Ironically, you focus on research and how that it lacking but you obviously haven’t done your own research— perhaps you need to write an article about how that is lacking in the Daily Lobo or the communication and journalism department.

Newsflash, intelligence is not for everyone.

Wouldn’t put much stock in anything coming out of ASU unless it is Playmates in Playboy. The school beats University of Colorado in Boulder at partying.

A student: “Your comment… sorry essay had no point.”
Correction: “Your comment, sorry essay, had no point.” See the paragraph on commas below.

A student: “When i had finished trying to pull everything together I knew right away it had to be a staff member from UNM.”
Correction: “When I had finished trying to pull everything together, I knew right away it had to be a staff member from UNM.” A first person “I” should always be capitalized. Again, see the paragraph on commas below.

A student: “Only reason is that it’s full of it’s self and make no point.”
Correction: “The only reason is that it’s full of itself and has no point. By the way, “it’s” means “it is” so your second “it’s” should really be “itself”. “Itself” is the reflexive form of “it” used as the direct or indirect object of a verb or the object of a preposition.

A student: “Don’t start pointing fingers why not help this student understand your point.”
Correction: Did you mean for this to read, “Don’t start pointing fingers. Why not help this student understand your point?” Questions always end with a question mark.

A student: “Why not write for the lobo or send a letter to the editor.”
Correction: “Why not write for the Daily Lobo or send a letter to the editor?” Proper nouns are capitalized and again, questions always end with a question mark.

A student: “All I know is that I hope your not a teacher.”
Correction: “All I know is that I hope you’re not a teacher.” In addition to the poor structure of this sentence, you have confused “your” and “you’re”. See, “your” is a possessive form of you, referring to something that a person has or something that belongs to the person in question, whereas “you’re” means “you are”, which is what I assume you meant.

Additionally, you clearly don’t understand the use of commas. A comma is a punctuation mark commonly used for separating things such as: lists, clauses, parenthetical phrases, between adjectives, before quotes, etc.

These are all examples of grammar rules that are taught in middle school or before. You are another shining example of the level of education expected at UNM. You are a dumbass.