Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
My Doctor friends would disagree about it not being "wholly relevant", as it took them over three times the time he spent studying to become fully qualified… 
Also, the fact that it was nearly 40 years ago, and he’s never used it since, not sure how relevant his "knowledge" is - 40 years ago I could speak Russian and knew the location, size, and capabilities of most of the Soviet Armed Forces in Europe; now, not so much… 
He’s really not more qualified than "Karen"… |
He really is... None of the stuff related to his background suggests he knows less about how a virus or a vaccine works than someone with 2 GCSEs who thinks it's all a 5G hoax.
As I understand a significant amount of the later years of medical study are working on specialisations, so yes, they would have done a lot of work on knowing how to be a surgeon or an oncologist or a heart specialist or even to have sufficient basic expertise for general practice. But three years is equivalent study to an undergraduate degree in another discipline, which is enough in itself to equate to a qualification in those places.
You may or may not have a valid point about the time - though given the stuff he pops up especially on twitter, it's clear he does still read and understand what's discussed in journals, papers, publications, so maybe he has (or hasn't until recently) kept fingers in his knowledge even if he isn't using it as a profession. And we have no idea why he dropped out - he may have been interested in medicine, but having seen general practice or whatever when on his placements decided it wasn't what he wanted to do for a career. (This isn't uncommon - I did chemistry at university and about the end of 2nd year didn't really want to end up with a career in it, but given I was on a 3 year course, just carried on with it anyway to get the paperwork it'd have been a waste to change course anyway - and whilst I haven't used it formally since, I can still understand - almost 20 years later - the stuff we were taught, and it might just take a minimal amount of catching up reading texts etc to get up to the same standard again).