Ben Stanley is a multiple award-winning journalist who has written for a large range of online and print publications, including VICE, Guardian, Sydney Morning Herald and the New Zealand Herald. As a writer, Ben’s specialties include investigative journalism, profile writing, and revisiting complex historical stories. A proud Kiwi, Ben lives in Memphis with his wife, young daughter, and two dogs.
Numbers from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) show that just 0.3 percent of enrolling medical students between 2000 and 2020 were aged 40 or older. Montana’s Marie Elwood was a 39-year-old mother of seven when she started. A University of Washington med school grad and new family medicine resident, this is the story of how she made it happen.
For more than 18,000 aspiring Indian physicians—the most significant international contingent in Ukraine—the lure of affordable, quality medical education in Ukraine is quickly unraveling into a nightmare. Marooned by Russia’s invasion and a lack of med school space available for them in their home country, many now find their medical education journeys paused. Worse consequences may be on the way.
A failed attempt at sparking a slave rebellion, John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia showed that violence had become inevitable when it came to resolving the issue of slavery in America. Though rarely remembered, a group of ‘grave robbing’ medical students ensured medical education played its part in one of the most controversial moments in United States history.
Aside from dentists, med students in the U.S. have the largest student loan debts out of all American college graduates and are well ahead of fellow future physicians, internationally. Last year, the median loan debt for medical students was around $207,000; a figure that had increased $40,000 since 2009. Over the last 12 years, that’s a rate three times faster than inflation.
Osteopathic medicine was founded by a self-taught frontier physician whose personal tragedy and Civil War despondence led to a rejection of modern medicine and a leap into a new one. Despite a long fight for mainstream recognition, a quarter of all American med students now study osteopathic medicine.
Comedian Hasan Minhaj explained the difference between MDs and DOs on late night television recently. “An MD is Coca Cola and a DO is RC Cola,” he said. Though ill-informed, Minhaj’s comments are an example of enduring public misconceptions around osteopathic physicians and their skill set.