Medical school in France was very cheap and open to anyone who wanted to enroll — at least for the first year. Only those who scored highest on year-end exams were allowed to continue to 2nd year.
Over 600 hopeful students enrolled that first year — but I worked extra hard and placed 38th. Only about a hundred were admitted. I was in!
Soon after I passed the “elimination contest” that was meant to let those of us who had scored best (and were allegedly the smartest) continue with the business of medical school. We had to get down to the business of learning things that we would need to function as doctors. Read more on My Training As A French Country Doctor…
I’ve read things by Dr. Pamela Wible before and she is definitely on a piece of the right track. Read more on “Patient Profiling” as a cause of medical error….
Filed under Diagnosis, Family, Government, Healthcare reform, life, medicine, News, politics by on Nov 10th, 2018. Comment. 
In the middle of downtown Paris, I was having a snack when I was a mere medical student, honored guest of a famous and chic woman professor/scientist. She was telling me about how her son, who had numerous psychological problems, had two distinguished medical school professors fighting over his proper diagnosis. Of course, while they were doing this, he did not appear to be getting any better.
She confided in me more than I would have expected. Read more on Getting The Right Diagnosis…
Filed under Diagnosis, Disease, Doctors, medicine, News, Psychiatrists by on Feb 7th, 2018. Comment.
I’ve written before about Dr. Milhaud — one of the professors in my French medical school. I really liked him.
He was practical and he was enough of a friend to come visit me when I returned to the USA for my general and orthopedic surgical residency staff at the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, Ohio.
Nobody else on my faculty at Amiens even thought of doing that. Read more on Why Use Medical Testing?…
Filed under Diagnosis by on Dec 15th, 2011. Comment.
THE PLACE: Medical school, France
THE TIME: 1975
I have survived the “concours,” a competitive examination that I would compare to an intellectual equivalent of “American Gladiators” and through human dissection, the anatomical study of a human who previously walked the Earth.
An Accurate Diagnosis Is The Basis Of All Treatment
Now our class is now going to start doing medicine with real, live people.
The excitement is great on our first day of an immense multispecialty class that will take the year, called “Semiologie.” The best English equivalent I can think of is “diagnostic signs.” We each receive notebooks and documents throughout the year that are signed off on by professorial-level clinical teachers who are doctors and have practices.
Filed under Diagnosis by on Feb 17th, 2011. Comment.