--- Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> PS. a "doctor" in Russia is not a doctor in the US.
> It
> requires only 5-6 years of schooling. They all know
Much of the so-called "training" in the US is really entry barrier to the profession, to keep the supply low and prices of service high. The Soviets did away withg these practices, because they needed medical personnel badly.
Much of the "quality" stuff connected to medical practice is a bunch of crock designed to ante up the doctors' status and their fees (cf. Larson, _The riso of professioalism: a sociological analysis_ U of California Press, 1977; Abbott, _The System of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor_ U of Chicago Press 1988). This is not to say that medical practioners are quacks - most of them ar enot - but that there is a lot of self-generated mythology surroundinng their profession.
BTW, the US physicians get about the same amount of actual medical schooling before they start practicing, except they are not called "doctors" but "interns." If memory serves, the Soviet-style med school had 6 years of strictly medical training plus a year or two of internship. No pre-med, no humanities, no fluff, just cutting up cadavers and pushing pills.
However, their high schools had better humanities programs than most US high schools - I'd say their high school program was more or less equivalent of a two year degree (AA) here.
Wojtek
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