Noctor to Doctor: Nurse practitioner wants to go to medical school because she's "tired of needing a collaborative agreement"
💬 comments
"Completely out of touch with reality" is a phrase that could be accurately applied to many midlevels, but Indiana nurse practitioner Alexis Yoo takes it to a whole new level not only with her questionable motives for wanting to obtain an MD, but with her obtuse questions about attending medical school. Yoo owns Yoo Direct Health, a Botox-peddling midlevel med-spa located in Noblesville, Indiana. The price list reads like a drive-through menu board. Would you like fries with that?
Of course, being based in the reduced-practice state of Indiana, Yoo must have a collaborating physician. The Yoo Direct Health website lists the collaborating physician as Dr. Soheir Ghattas, who specializes in family medicine. NP Yoo's burning desire to be rid of her collaborative agreement with Dr. Ghattas - whose profile is listed dead last on the page, well below that of even the receptionist - should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the inflated egos of nurse practitioners who falsely believe that they are equal, or even superior to physicians and should therefore be able to practice independently without physician oversight.
It's quite sad to see that NP Yoo's apparent motivation for wanting to obtain a medical degree is because she's "tired of needing a collaborative agreement" as a nurse practitioner. There's no mention about actually wanting to become a physician or expanding her knowledge base. On the contrary, given that NP Yoo expects her NP minions to "keep my practice going while I'm in school", it almost sounds like she intends to return to her med-spa after medical school. WTF? Surely, the cost of maintaining a collaborative agreement with a physician is cheaper than paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition, room, and board to attend a for-profit Carribean medical school like Ross?
Maybe the $400,000 sticker shock is the reason why this aspiring midlevel pre-med is wondering if she can work "part-time" during medical school, which, needless to say, is highly inadvisable for all but the lightest of jobs, and even then, only really feasible during a light rotation such as in M4 year. And at a meat-grinder for-profit medical school with a double-digit attrition rate such as Ross that has no qualms about failing subpar students, trying to maintain a job - even part-time - seems like a short-sighted folly apt to end with the catastrophic implosion of one's medical school career. And what kind of part-time job is one going to find on an island in the Caribbean, anyway?
NP Yoo's next pair of questions is even more eyebrow-raising. "How often are you having to go there?" "How long are you there for?" For the love of Hippocrates, these are questions so basic that any pre-med who has done even a modicum of research would know the answer to!
Because we're feeling extra nice, the answer to these questions essentially is: all the fucking time for the next 16-20 months, because this is medical school, not online NP school!
As for "how was it setting up your core rotations", while we cannot comment specifically on the process of how RUSM sets up its clinical rotations, at least it has structured rotations. Despite the fact that it's a Caribbean medical school, Ross, at least on paper, offers a wide variety of clinical electives in addition to the required core clerkships, and isn't afraid to publish a list of its affiliated rotation sites/hospitals. Certainly, this is infinitely far above and beyond the standard (or lack thereof) for nurse practitioner school, in which students are essentially left out in the cold, expected to fend for themselves and secure their own clinical placements.
"Any major hiccups you wish you [k]new about before starting?" Oh, boy. The sheer naiveté of asking such a question about a Caribbean medical school!
| School | Estimated attrition rate (%) |
|---|---|
| Ross University | 41.7 |
| Saba University | 35.0 |
| St. George's University | 26.3 |
| American University of the Caribbean | 20.4 |
Source: Med School Tips
melab
And then there's that whole other hiccup of actually being able to match into residency after graduating from a Caribbean medical school like Ross. Forty percent attrition rate aside, It's quite laughable for NP Yoo to confidently proclaim that she's "not worried about getting a job after graduation", because she damn well should be. She can't just go back to her practice and start practicing medicine independently without a medical license!
And to receive a medical license in Indiana, a graduate of an international medical school like Ross must complete 24 months of postgraduate training. As the shortest ACGME-accredited categorical residency programs are three years in length, the only way one could conceivably meet the bare minimum of 24 months without doing a traditional residency would be to spend two years as an intern in a preliminary medicine or transitional year program (an uncommon and dead-end path with no direct path to specialty board certification). So to answer NP Yoo's last question - "how long is it realistically taking from start to finish?" A long time. A damn long time!
It's no wonder that NP Yoo is looking toward the Caribbean for medical school. Anyone whose stated motivation for getting an MD is "because I'm tired of needing a collaborative agreement" and is incapable of finding the answers to basic objective questions such as "how often are you needing to go there?" and "how long is it realistically taking from start to finish?" is not likely to survive the academic and intellectual rigor of a reputable US allopathic or osteopathic medical school, let alone be admitted to one.