This is a wonderful question and one that I myself have been pondering and battling as I went through medical school and ultimately graduated through this past year. It’s very insightful of you to ask, because perhaps you are looking to go into medical school yourself or are wondering what sorts of things people actually learn in school.There are actually a huge set of skills that they don’t teach you in medical school, but the main ones that I will cover are ones that I feel my particular institution fell short on (and a few of my friends who were at various other institutions as well have agreed). **Please note that I write this as a United States Allopathic Medical School Graduate so results and opinions may differ depending on where you are from**Business/money skillsThis fits under the same category that someone else has actually mentioned in their post which is “Management and Entrepreneurship.” Most of medical school time is spent memorizing anatomy, biological cycles within the body, medications, physical examination skills and pathological diseases. None of the curriculum required by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) which is the accrediting medical school body has a financial planning requirement. They have requirements for schools to offer financial aid and financial counseling (which tends to be in the form of an office much like undergraduates have), but no actual requirements to teach individuals how to run a business, the basics of money, the basics of running a hospital or clinic, etc. Reality is that sometimes someone with a Bachelor’s in Business which takes 3–4 years is leagues ahead of a Doctor of Medicine who has been in school for at least 8 years when it comes to financial mastery.This is an even more important skill to learn especially when you take in the fact that the AVERAGE medical school debt is around $166,000. On top of the fact that the average resident salary is $52,000 (please keep in mind this is PRE-TAX) with a 5%-7% accruing debt interest, it’s all the more important to teach future docs how to handle money. This fact has become prominent enough to even have stories in everyday news ($1 million mistake: Becoming a doctor)Teaching skillsAgain I will refer to the LCME curriculum standards which anyone can see here: http://lcme.org/wp-content/uploa... (which is the most up to date as far as I understand). Currently the curricular content section under “Standard 7” states the following categories:Biomedical, Behavioral, Social SciencesOrgan Systems/Life Cycle/Primary Care/Prevention/Wellness/Symptoms/Signs/ Differential Diagnosis, Treatment Planning, Impact of Behavioral and Social FactorsScientific Method/Clinical/Translational ResearchCritical Judgment/Problem-Solving SkillsSocietal ProblemsCultural Competence and Health Care DisparitiesMedical EthicsCommunication SkillsInterprofessional Collaborative SkillsAs you can see it is not a requirement to teach medical students how to teach, about adult or child learning theory, or even about how to learn as an individual. Why might this be important you ask? Well as a physician no matter what you do YOU WILL TEACH. As a resident (the first level of being a doctor a.k.a a doctor in training) you WILL be teaching medical students and patients. As an attending (when you are a fully fledged physician practicing on your own) you WILL once again be most likely teaching medical students, residents, and of course patients. Teaching is such an invaluable skill that as one of the most academic fields out there I find it amazing that we choose to ignore educating such a valuable skill. Some institutions are trying to implement programs, for example the school I came from had a medical education track which I was a part of, but again this is not required so not every doctor knows how to do this.Research SkillsSo listed above you see “Scientific Method/Clinical/Translational Research.” The way my school implemented it was to give a few lectures on the subject (by a few I really mean a few, as in maybe 1–3 a year perhaps like 8–10 over the course of 4 years and this is with us being constantly in class for the first 2 years getting lectures at least 5 days a week from 7am-5pm). These lectures entailed how to critically read a research article, learning how to cite sources and find good articles, and learn how to understand basic statistics. Unfortunately as many Ph.D’s, Masters Degree holders, and many avid researchers know there is so much more to actually be able to do research. How does one go ahead and get a grant? What forms do you need and how do you get IRB approval? How does one start a lab and get funding? What does a career in research look like and how does it even start?My school was particularly good in that if you were interested enough you could work real hard and find a good mentor in research and join a track program called the “Research Track” that had additional lectures and resources, but again this was not a requirement so not every doctor learns these skills. We would also have some required “research” projects, but to be honest it was not regulated in a way that Master’s/Ph.D Thesis• would be nor would you get any assigned mentors (unless you were perhaps in the track program) so guidance was all up to how aggressively you sought it out. This means that some lackluster “research” projects were approved and not everyone actually learns how good solid research is conducted. Myself included.Technology/Innovation SkillsMy background was in Biomedical Engineering before I went to medical school. Upon going there, I practically lost it all. I found that quite a few of my classmates didn’t even know how to operate computers beyond the basic everyday usage, to the point that every time there was an I.T. issue (such as the projector shutting down) I was called to the front of the class to help fix the issue. Why would doctors need to know anything about technology? Well in an industry where our medical technology continues to grow at such a rapid pace, it would be good for doctors to at least understand how an x-ray, CT scanner, MRI, and Ultrasound machine worked. The surgical tools used in everyday surgeries have gotten so advanced now that we can perform operations that use to take patients weeks to heal now to operations with such small incisions that they heal within a few days. Isn’t that AMAZING?! The thing is we need more doctors who can understand the technology and continue working with engineers to keep innovating! I personally did research with Biomedical Engineers and Doctors during my time in medical school and the #1 frustration I kept hearing from both sides was “Ugh the Engineers don’t understand what us doctors need” and “Ugh the Doctors are so demanding, don’t understand anything about how technology is now.” Hence an interesting gap was born in my eyes.Interestingly enough Texas A&M University has plans to create such a program in creating “Physician Engineers”. If you are interested check it out here: Texas A&M planning to create medical school for physician engineers at Houston Methodist HospitalHealth PolicyMy school was located smack dab in the heart of Washington D.C. the nations capital. Health policy is currently an optional track program where students can actually go to Capitol Hill and get very very involved if they want to. This was an amazing opportunity offered. But again I stress this is OPTIONAL. This freaks me out because a lot of people graduating from medical school don’t know anything about how health policy works, how it is lobbied, and how to make change. This explains why there aren’t that many doctors on Capitol Hill.The scarier thing for me is that to this day…I DON’T COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND HOW HEALTH INSURANCE WORKS. And I ran the student run clinic at my institution. We often deferred to the social workers or the business department of the hospital. We are never taught how expensive different medications are, how patients get billed, how we can lower costs for patients in general. Heck we don’t even know the different policies, restrictions, and costs it takes to run a clinic or hospital. Again. This is optional. Shocking because I always shuddered at this question I would often get asked from patients “Do you take my health insurance? If not where can I go or what can I do? Because I really need help now.”How to find a job if one decides to do anything other than directly become a practicing physicianTo give everyone some statistics (and these numbers come from the National Residency Match Program a.k.a NRMP themselves and you can see them here: Press Release: Results of 2022 NRMP Main Residency Match Largest on Record as Match Continues to Grow). Over the last four years there has been a 10.6% increase in the number of U.S. Allopathic Medical Students graduating. Hitting an all time high of 18,668! Such a wonderful accomplishment that we should be proud of! Especially with the incoming doctor shortage that the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) has done studies on in 2022 estimating a shortage of 61,700-94,700 physicians by 2022. (If you are interested look here: GME Funding and Physician Workforce). Now here is the other issue. We are opening more medical schools, but the RESIDENCY (doctors in training) positions are not growing as quickly. Take a look at this image:This is published data from the latest match which you can look at here if you are interested: http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/u...Notice how the two lines aren’t getting closer together? Well the purple line is the number of doctors in training positions available. The green line is the number of people who graduated with M.D.s whether from this country or not applying for those spots. So we keep making more schools and having more potential applicants, but we aren’t increasing the number of spots available for training which is a required part of training doctors. I think we can all see the problem here. Still not convinced? Take a look at this graph:Registered Applicants up 1,036. Active applicants (those who got interviews and went to interview then selected a list of places they wanted to go to) up 571. Program positions? Up 538. Notice it’s smaller than those first two numbers. Active Seniors 18,187 up from last year. Matched Seniors 17,057 up from last year. % Positions filled by Seniors 61.2% DOWN from last year. Also take notice that the number of active seniors went up 162, but the number of matched seniors went up 125. That’s 37 seniors lacking in matching. Critics will say that there are numerous factors for this, and I whole-heartedly agree, but where the heck are these seniors going? In addition isn’t it worrisome that there are 1,130 UNMATCHED seniors??? This is only U.S. graduates, not even including those from Doctors of Osteopathic Medical Schools, U.S. citizens trying to come home from Carribbean Schools, and International Medical Graduates. For which the numbers are far worse and can hover down to 40–50%.Now what are these seniors suppose to do in the mean time or if they want to do something related to medicine but not be a clinical physician? Unfortunately having an M.D. degree doesn’t qualify you for a wide range of jobs that something like an M.B.A might qualify you for. At least not that I am aware of (I would love for someone with insight to comment on this), but from personal experience myself it is hard to figure out what jobs I can get with an M.D. degree solely because my education has only trained me to be a doctor. There is so much talent wasted, and there is so much about the healthcare field that needs to be fixed that I am shocked there isn’t more education and resources to get these graduates to other jobs/opportunities that can help the healthcare field in general. I am saying this after I spoke to 12 different physicians AND after going to my career center at my institution who could not advise me on what I could do with just an M.D. degree other than go to residency. Scary and disheartening if I do say so myself.7. How to stay physically healthy and have good mental hygieneIn medical school you are constantly under a stressful environment. This is something that no one ever seems to talk about. There was a survey based study done by Goebert et al. which showed that of more than 2,000 medical students and residents surveyed who responded (with an 89% response rate) 12% had probably MAJOR depression and 9.2% had probably mild/moderate depression. (study here: Depressive symptoms in medical students and residents: a multischool study.) Now this study isn’t perfect, and there are numerous flaws with a survey based design such as response bias, but the fact that 21.2% of medical students and residents had potential DEPRESSION with some having suicidal ideation should worry all of us. Having an incidence of disease of 5% makes the entire medical community react, why not 21.2%? The one phrase that medical schools LOVE saying is “Welcome. You will now be learning as if you are drinking from a fire hose.” I personally hate that phrase and think there is something fundamentally wrong with how you are teaching when that is how you start off your educational journey.It is estimated that about 300–400 physicians die annually from suicide. That is an average that means that about one doctor will die A DAY from a preventable cause. Which personally scares me. Especially since we are always talking about the “Physician Shortage.” The new CDC report notes that: “In 1999, the age-adjusted rate of suicide was 10.5 per 100,000 of the population. In 2022. it was 13.0, representing an overall rise of 24% The rate increased by 1% per year from 1999-2006, and then doubled to 2% after that” That means that each year there are 41,457 suicides in the United States alone (I used the current 2022 population data of the US having 318.9 million people). Mental health is extremely important. Poor mental hygiene costs lives. To put this into perspective a little bit Ebola in 2022 costed 4,033 deaths according to the CDC. That means more than 10 times the number of people are killing themselves each year. (And please note, I am not claiming that suicide is any more or less devastating than Ebola, lives lost are all equally saddening to me). (Here are links for these topics: Medical student suicide: It's impact is devastating. This case proves it., petition: Stop the suicide epidemic in medical schools and residency programs!). Physician Burn-out is very real, and something that many people are trying to work on.8. The actual entire process of what is expected to happen into medical school and residency and beyondThis to me is the funniest thing that ends up happening in medical school which is something that I have heard from numerous sources. Many just had to sort of figure out how medical school plays out as they went along. When we all enter medical school many of us didn’t know that there was a licensing examination that was broken up into 3 parts that is needed before we are allowed to practice (Step 1, Step 2, Step 3). And for those that did, they weren’t sure of when those tests would be taken, unless they were fortunate enough to have someone in the family who had been through the process before. In addition, many of us are not informed that you need to know what kind of doctor you want to be by the end of 3rd year because you have to know before you apply for residency since it is a large headache to switch from one specialty to another and it can even be nearly impossible to (for example if you wanted to switch from a primary care practice of family medicine to Orthopedic surgery or Ophthalmology). Most of us learn of these things either from the school or through word of mouth as we are going along. Mainly because we are so overwhelmed with trying to learn the medical knowledge, trying to plot your career path for the rest of our lives is something most of us aren’t even thinking about…but we should be because well…it’s the career path for the REST OF OUR LIVES. Note this may sound grossly exaggerated, but ask any doctor how hard it is to switch from one specialty field to another in the case interest changes, and you will be surprised at how hard it truly is. I have met very motivated physicians who really wanted to switch and basically had to start back at square one as a resident physician and work their way back up, that is if they get into any of the already limited residency positions.These are a few of the personal things that I have observed are missing. Again this is MY personal experience with MY institution, I can’t say that this is how it feels everywhere, but I have spoken to numerous friends at at least 10 different institutions who agree that they felt the same way as well. This includes individuals who decided to leave medical school altogether because of some of these issues.Phew, now this was an extremely extremely long post. I hope that it was at least somewhat helpful, thank you for reading all the way through. If I came off as just a complainer, I apologize because that is not what I wanted to do at all. These are observations that I have made as someone who is extremely passionate about education with an extensive background in it. I am personally trying to find a job in medical education as well currently so that I hope to be able to make some changes to the field. If anyone has any comments or questions please don’t hesitate to ask! I love to answer :)Thanks again for reading and have a great one! It would mean so much to me if you could up-vote this post and share it as well if you find it helpful because I really want to shed more light on the path to becoming a doctor and the medical system in general. It is such an important topic for even those who don’t want to be doctors to understand since we all eventually get involved in the medical system one way or another.Thank you so much once again.