A Modest Proposal for US Medical Education Reform: Leveraging Market Forces and Creating Industry Standards to Combat the Problem of Student Variation and Volume

In the spirit (but not exact format) of Mr. Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” this article is written to challenge the capitalist response to supply and demand and highlight the downsides of applying it indiscriminately to medical education. We approach this piece as satire and a pointed critique of our current approach to the training of physicians in the hopes that readers view it in that regard. We have chosen modern dairy production intentionally as an analogy to frame our criticism. The medical field’s focus on rapid expansion has inevitably led to increased standardization without acknowledgment that our current approach to training physicians requires an efficiency that stifles individuality, positions diversity of medical students as dangerous, and uses professionalism and burnout as means of control. This creates a bewildering and incomprehensible system where aspiring doctors enter what they believe to be a noble profession, only to face overwhelming workloads and debt, discover limited relevance between their medical education and contemporary healthcare realities, and find that direct patient interaction now constitutes a small fraction of physicians’ daily responsibilities.