Medical Schools, Students See Gaps in Policy Education

Should health policy be a bigger part of medical students' education?

While most medical students feel obligated to put the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into practice, they don't understand much about it, a study shows.

The study's survey results, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, are from a January 2011 survey of all medical students in Minnesota, asking three things about the PPACA:

• Did students understand the PPACA;
• Did they support it;
• Were they obligated to help implement it?

More than half, 69%, said they did feel obligated to help implement the ACA. But, only 48% said they understood the basic components of it.

Students were surveyed just nine months after the President signed healthcare reform into law. The study's author, Tyler Winkelman MD, of the University of Minnesota, says even now, a year and a half later, he doesn't think the results would change.