Engineering and Medicine

I recently read a post over at that mirror belongs to frank in which the author puzzled about students from engineering wanting to go into medicine. I'm an engineer with both an undergraduate and a masters degree in bioengineering and yes, I always knew I wanted to be a doctor. Quite frankly though, I thought normal biomedical degrees were A) boring and B) less likely to get me into medical school because I would look like every other joe shmoe applicant.

I took the usual courses in biology, microbiology, physiology, chemistry, physics, biochemistry plus lots of other interesting things that run of the mill premed students are never taught: biosystems design, bioreactor and bioprocess design, differential equations (well, ok, that one wasn't very interesting), biomechanics, mechanics, heat and mass transfer, design, and the list goes on. And you know what? The courses that taught me the most stuff that has helped me in medical school were my engineering courses.

How can that be? Well, most of the mindlessly memorized information from my undergrad I forgot. What stayed with me was the ability to problem solve, find information in books and from other resources, talk to people and work with people, and think about things in non-conventional way. These are skills taught in engineering. As an honours medical student I can honestly say that not taking a biomedical science degree has not hurt me and it has helped me in ways I could have never imagined.

Yes, maybe medicine would be better if we decided in high school what degree we wanted to do and we went through a 6 year medical degree, but then we would miss out on a whole pool of applicants from unique backgrounds who will make great doctors. In my opinion, most of the learning in medical school occurs in clerkship. I think this is a profession that would benefit from more apprenticeship style learning. Clerkship is great because it takes what you've learned in the classroom in whirlwind style and solidifies it in your mind. Maybe med school should be 5 years with one additional year in clerkship. Maybe we should just attend school during the summers so more time can be allotted for clerking. I don't know.

All I know is that you can be an engineer who loved engineering but wanted to be a doctor.

I think that orthopedic surgeons are really mechanical engineers in disguise. I think that nephrologists are chemical engineers who work in the realm of medicine. I think physiatrists are biomechanists hiding out in white coats. Maybe you just have to be an engineer to understand where I'm coming from.

Note: for those of you who don't know what the ring at the top of the post represents you can read about it here.