[Mbioguy]

Boy are you in for a surprise. Medical school lectures are mostly optional these days and are entirely skipped by a significant proportion of med students in favor of resources like Strong Medicine (literally a YouTube channel), gigantic Anki digital flashcard decks (see reddit.com/r/medicalschoolanki), UWorld, First Aid, Sketchy, Pathoma, etc. 'High Yield' is the buzzword for resources that are a better use of time. So yes, you almost certainly will trust a doctor someday who was educated at least in part by YouTube or comparable online resources. You just won't know it, since the paper on the wall will say "University of X". And as long as they pass the boards and make it through residency, does it matter?

[snowwrestler]

> doctor someday who was educated at least in part by YouTube or comparable online resources

Emphasis mine.

No one cares if medical students avail themselves of digital resources to help them through medical school. Good for them.

Show me how many practicing doctors passed the boards and made it through residency after ONLY using Youtube channels and flash cards to self-educate.

[Balgair]

It's a continuum.

Some people rely on the 'free' resources more than others. The real question is where is the cutoff percentage at. Say someone got 95% of what they know only from free resources and passed boards swimmingly. That sure don't look good on the med-school.

Say 95% of the entire class got 95% of the learning through Youtube/Anki and 95% of them passed boards. At such a percentage, med-school is all but useless to the general public that they serve. May as well get rid of them.

Granted, I don't think it's anywhere near that kind of level of dereliction that the med-schools are at (Cadaver Lab is an obvious counterpoint). But, where is the cut-off point for the schools and society? It's not 5% of the material being learned outside of them, that's fine I think. But if 95% is 'learned' outside the lectures, then yeah, that's a real bad sign.

It's a complicated question and the answer will likely be more complex and will evolve from class to class and year to year.

[mcguire]

Say they sprouted wings and flew around. That would be pretty bad for the air travel industry.

Have you a real, physical example of someone who "got 95% of what they know only from free resources and passed boards swimmingly"?

[u801e]

As someone who went to medical school more than 20 years ago, it wasn't that much different other than people using "question banks" in order to help them pass the tests. There were plenty of prep books for preparing for the USMLE and board specific exams (for rotations in the third year).