Apr. 27--Much of what today's medical students learn will be obsolete within a decade.
"When I was in medical school, we were learning about this unusual disease called AIDS, and we knew nothing about it. The human genome, the genetic basis of disease, was in its infancy," said Michael Boninger, 46, the associate dean for medical student research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
New treatments and drugs are in constant development.
"Education does not end with medical school. But you can still go through medical school pretty much skimming the surface. There's no requirement that you learn to critically assess science," Boninger said.
Four years ago, Pitt's medical school tried to change that by starting the Scholarly Project Initiative, a required 30-month research course within the medical school curriculum in which students work on a single research project.
The 165 students in this year's graduating class, who receive their medical degrees May 19, are the first to have completed the full requirement. More than 40 of the projects have been published as academic papers, and there will be more papers later, Boninger said. Twelve of the academic papers have been recognized with national awards.
The medical students will be honored for completing their research at the school's first "Scholars Day" from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Thomas E. Starzl Biomedical Science Tower, South Room S100A, 210 Lothrop St., Oakland.
Nicole Velez, 25, of Churchill published the results of her study in the Osteoporosis Medical Journal.
Velez was in a group that examined bone density of senior athletes and compared the bone density of runners to swimmers and people who do not exercise at all. Many of the study's subjects were participants in the Senior Olympics in Pittsburgh in 2005.
"It was a really great study. I am not into lab research, but this was good. I was involved in every step of the process," said Velez, who plans to enter dermatology.
Chris Ripple, 30, of Severna Park, Md., worked on a project involving necrotizing enterocolitis, the most common and serious gastrointestinal disorder among hospitalized pre-term infants.
Ripple, who worked with pediatric surgeon David Hackham at UPMC Children's Hospital and plans to go into urology, said the project gave him skills that will help later in his career.
"Things are always changing, and any physician has to stay up to date," Ripple said. "And what separates an adequate physician from a really exceptional one is the ability to change how you practice medicine."
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