Founded in May 1998 by Aaron Lemperes, a WWU alumni, the WWU pre-med club is designed for students who are pursuing a medical

WWU Premed Club

History

Last Updated 2/19/02

Founded in May 1998 by Aaron Lemperes, a WWU alumni, the WWU pre-med club is designed for students who are pursuing a medical education. Phil Gerity, Amber Hodges and Margi Morris are the leaders of the club for the 2001/2002 academic year. Throughout the year, there are many opportunities for students to meet and ask questions of other WWU pre-med students. Also, we try to bring in guest speakers from the local medical community and invite you to listen and ask questions of them. We want to make the wwupremed club a place to pool the knowledge and experiences of students, faculty, and the medical community to better prepare us all for medical school admissions, medical school, residencies, and ultimately a career in medicine. The scheduled events shown below will be updated with meeting places and times, to better enable students to keep track of club events. If you have any questions, simply e-mail us at wwupremed@hotmail.com Also, be sure to visit the web pages we have found interesting (see links at bottom of page).

Goals of the leaders of the WWU Premed Club

1. To share our collective knowledge about the process.

2. To bring interesting speakers to Western to share their experiences with us.

3. To reach out to the community and make small contributions when we can.

Let’s cut to the chase… What classes do I need to take?

Do I have to be a science major? A difficulty for many pre-med students is deciding what major to choose while still including the required courses for medical school in their curriculum. Before continuing, here is a general list of what medical schools will require you to take:

Core courses

1. Biology 201, 202, 203 w/ labs

2. General Chemistry 121, 122, 123 w/ labs

3. Organic Chemistry 351, 352, 353 w/ labs

4. Physics 114, 115, 116 w/ labs or Physics 121, 122, 123 w/ labs

Supplementary courses

5. One Calculus course or more (i.e. Math 124 or higher)

6. One year of English (may be waived if your major is in the humanities or social sciences)

7. At least 2 quarters of Biochemistry (soon to be universal)

Please note that this is only a very general list of prerequisites--there is some variability across schools (i.e. some schools don’t have a math requirement). The best thing to do is to visit the website of a school you are interested in for their specific requirements.

***NEW***

Some other highly recommended courses are:

· Genetics

· Cell Biology

· Biochemistry, biochemistry, biochemistry…

· Human Anatomy and/or Physiology

· Some of the upper division electives in chemistry (i.e. medicinal chemistry)

Other disciplines such as Anthropology, Psychology, Communications, and even Business may be nice additions to your schedule and will serve you well in the future. In fact you are doing yourself a disservice if you don’t sample some other types of classes.

Medical schools in this era do not require or even favor students with science or pre-med majors. If your love is in History, Music, English, etc., by all means major in the area you are interested in. Majoring in something you really enjoy will make the under-graduate years more enjoyable and most likely will help your GPA. Hopefully you can at least tolerate the sciences, but it is not required that you major in them.

The dreaded MCAT

It’s really not that bad, or so they say… If you study enough and practice hard it should be an opportunity to improve your chances of getting accepted—it’s all about attitude. Here’s a good site to get you started: http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/start.htm

The AMCAS site will also explain the actual application process.

There are a ton of prep courses (Kaplan, Princeton Review, etc.) to take or you can buy a review book and study on your own. Always check out eBay’s site first for great deals on used MCAT stuff!

Recommendations

You’ll need at least 3 and they need to be good so choose wisely. J

What is a medical career all about?

Certainly, this is a broad question, but in answering it, we must first look at how medicine has changed even in this century. In 1895, William Roentgen discovered how a beam of electric current (the x-ray) could allow physicians to see into a patient's body, changing the practice of medicine radically. In the early part of the 20th century, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, the first of many antibiotics to follow. Now, in the final decade of the 20th century, biogenetic issues are beginning to impact the medical community as we begin to understand DNA and genetic inheritance in much greater depth. A few years ago, the first successful clone was accomplished with a sheep embryo, a clone known as Dolly.

How will physicians of the future deal with patient confidentiality issues? How will advice be given to guide people in choices related to genetic testing? Is it right for insurance companies to test people for genetic diseases before insuring them? These are good things for us to start thinking about today because we are the physicians of tomorrow.

Choosing a medical school is a hard choice. You need to consider not only the cost but also the reputation, the quality of residency placements achieved by graduates, the location, and other aspects of the overall experience. Each medical school accepts students based on different areas of importance to them. A GPA of 3.5 and MCAT scores ranging from 27-33 will likely earn you an interview at a few schools. Again, these are simply averages. Another very important aspect in gaining acceptance to medical school is the character of the individual as displayed in activities and volunteer work. Finding a volunteer position in the medical field is good experience and will also help you decide if you really enjoy medicine. Start early in your college career and keep a journal of what you see. In addition, a research project with a faculty member will go a long way especially if you get into it early and are interested in academic medicine.

After four years in medical school, students enter into a two to six year residency program, depending upon the specialty. Family doctors require on average a three-year residency in family practice. During the years of residency, the trainee is paid an average wage (around $30,000 per year) and can average 100 hours per week with 24 to 36 hour rotations, again depending on the specialty.

Physicians confront many cases where, despite the best use of modern medical knowledge, the patient fails to improve and may even die. Physicians also deal with often unpredictable, even hostile patients. Today, another intrusion into the way physicians practice is government and insurance regulations. Yet, physicians of this era have a huge variety of new treatments and procedures which may enable them to save the lives of a patient that ten years ago may have been incurable.

Consider the facts before you enter a career in medicine. Doctors are often on call during and beyond their residencies up to 3 times a week; they may be pulled away from their family more than they’d prefer; they may work in a high stress environment; they may be faced with situations during their career where they make a mistake that has drastic consequences; or perhaps they are sued by an angry family that feels as though the doctor didn’t do a good job. All of these are possible, especially in primary care medicine. Other types of medicine, such as medical research and academic medicine can lead to vastly different lifestyles. The important thing is that the pre-medical student is aware of the negatives before being swept away by all of the wonderful things that a career in medicine offers.

If the motivations for entering medicine are simply a superficial pursuit of prestige, money, or self-gratification, the career could soon become physically and emotionally draining. However, a medical career can be one of the most gratifying professions, offering a large variety of work and an ever changing, fascinating array of possibilities.