Educating Physicians: What Counts and What Doesn't?

Do you think that a pass/fail (or honors/pass/fail) grading system provides medical educators with enough information about the level of knowledge and skills their students have mastered?
Yes.
No.
Don't know.

There is evidence that medical students' compassion for patients erodes and that they become more hardened during their medical school years and residency training. Which of the following best describes why you think this happens?
Applicants misrepresent their compassion and ideals in order to gain entrance to medical school.
To exercise good clinical judgment, a doctor has to be able to create a distance between himself or herself and the patient's suffering.
Through constant, direct contact with patients, they decide that not everyone is deserving of their compassion.
The competitiveness of medical school and residency application causes students to concentrate on grades and diagnoses to the detriment of patients.
There is so much demand for their compassion that they become victims of "compassion fatigue."
There are too many patients and too little time.
Everyone becomes less compassionate as he or she gets older and more familiar with the world.
Don't know.

Which of the following best describes how you think medical school admissions committees should treat the ethnicity of applicants? Committee members should:
Disregard a candidate's ethnicity in their deliberations.
Consider a candidate's ethnicity only when the candidate meets or exceeds all of the school's other admissions criteria.
Consider a candidate's ethnicity because it may explain why he or she has not met other admissions criteria.
Consider a candidate's ethnicity as important if it helps increase the diversity of the physician workforce.
Don't know.