Thread by @drbrainhacker

A valid question asked to me: "Do you want our (UPCM) grads to be mediocre.

I am not confrontational whether real life or socmed, and regardless if the senior person is nice or mean, I accord the same respect so here was my answer:

Short version: No.
Longer kilometric version:

Far from it sir/ma'am. We can be and will continue to strive to be excellent as 5 star physicians as stated in our mission vision.

We should be evidence based, as our mentors have taught us, to scrutinize with a critical mind the sources of information we encounter, not just in the medical literature but also in real life, most especially on social media.

We must continue to strive for excellence in academics, research, and service to the people, and the parameters we base this excellence on must also be credible and unshakable.

My point is we do not have a monopoly on excellence. That is a disservice to the patients all physicians treat. What the PRC and in kind the marketing people behind pulsenet look at is supposed to be competence for all would be physicians ...

but the quality of the examination questions and answers are suspect.If we will be agreeing with these marketing-driven surveys basing our idea of excellence on a metric that is solely on this 2 weekend set of exams of 100 item multiple choice questions ...

with a premium of having more examinees taking it, I will beg to disagree. It is no longer a matter of one school's pride over another, in this day and age, as far as patients, medical students, and research collaborators both here and abroad, are concerned.

I agree with you that UP owes it to the Filipino people to always have excellence and honor.

That is my answer po to this Miss Universe question.

I will not debate, as it is not my style, nor will I attack, regardless of age or IQ. I have handled UP students who deserve to be in UPCM but did not get in and are now in other equally good med schools. I have also handled med students who are also good and never were UP.

If doubts are cast on how deserving and excellent my former and current students are, I will speak my mind about it. I believe there are many of us in the academe & alumni practicing the profession who will agree with me that we should all strive to be our best for our patients.

An averaged score of 10 or more unrelated exams over 2 weekends that don't capture all the learnings we got in med school is not a valid measure of the abilities of a physician.