new 5-year medical school program at UC Merced by 2010

Despite all the budget cuts and deficits (or as a result of it, one can argue otherwise), Lt. Governor of California and University of California regent John Garamendi recently proposed a bold plan that would allow high school graduates to earn medical degrees in just five years at UC Merced, thus creating a new medical school in the UC system that can generate 23-year-old physicians — the youngest in the nation — by 2010.

Garamendi's plan would target the Central Valley's brightest youngsters, with family ties to the area. He imagines a program that would condense an undergraduate science program into three years, then a general medicine program into two years.

In contrast, Stanford University and the University of California-San Francisco Medical School offer four-year programs, on top of a conventional four-year undergraduate degree — a total of eight years.

Because it would be held at the UC-Merced campus, community colleges and local clinics and hospitals, no new construction would be required and it could open as soon as 2010, he said.

While I applaud the proposal for directly addressing the shortage of medical professionals in the Central Valley region, I cringe at the idea of having 23-year-old (or younger) doctors straight out from high school take on the responsibility of making healthcare (and sometimes even life-or-death) decisions for patients from diverse backgrounds that may be three or four times their age.A successful doctor-patient relationship demands much more than booksmarts, competitive GPA, and the number of community service hours one has served in school, and that is precisely why medical schools are highly selective and society pays a premium for its doctors.

But then once again, society's healthcare accessibility issues such as the shortage of primary care physicians in non-metropolitan and rural areas are unprecedented, and consequently, bold, unconventional solutions such as this may be required to quickly address the physician per capita disparity in California and beyond.

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