Everyone has a brain in their head and sometimes problem soccurrences can occur with their brain. Those problems can be solved by a specialist called a Neurologist. A Neurologist studies about the brain and the actions that our brain makes us do and is connected. They treat patients that have disorders that occur in the nervous system. To do this, a lot of studies need to be taken and you have to take a lot of time out for getting your degree and attending medical school before you actually start earning your own money. Neurology is one of the hardest specialties in the medical field.
First, to become a neurologist, you need to be a student in premed. You need to be pre-med in order to go into medical school to officially be a doctor to practice. Neurologists need to get a bachelor’s degree, and an MD from a medical school before even studying in the neurology specialty. There is no set undergraduate major, however there is the pre-med concentration that will fill the medical school requirements. However, to be benefitted the most, you need to focus on studying biological sciences, physics, chemistry or pre-med to fill the requirements for medical school.
Physics will help you understand the human behavior that the brain will make us do. Biological sciences help the student understand the science behind the brain and what is known facts of the nervous system. This will be vital when you are diagnosing a patient and you need to know how the average look of the spine or brain is to see what is the difference between the patient’s and the average example. Many premedical courses usually include microbiology, human anatomy and biochemistry.
These courses need to be taken because a neurologists needs to know how a person works and how the mind is vital to the behaviors of a human being. Before medical school, you need to take the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test) You need to take this in your junior year of your undergrad program. This lets the school evaluate your skills and knowledge and they will accept you depending on what score you make on the test that fits their school requirements. All of this will prepare your mind and help you understand the human brain more to properly diagnose the patients you will get as a doctor.
The classes you take are not just to waste your time on while you are in college, they actually help you solve problems neurologists face in their time of being a doctor. Spinal injuries are the most common issues that people see a neurologist for. If a patient has something wrong with their spine, the neurologist will be able to analyze the spine and see what is wrong because they took a biology class which helps them. All human body classes help them figure out what to do and how to fix the problem because it means they have a full understanding of the nervous system.
Neurology majors, need to take a o of science classes as a premed student to get into medical school. These classes include biology 1 and 2, chemistry 1 and 2, both of these need to have a lab taken with them. Labs are taken to apply the classes in real life situations and be able to handle the situation hands on rather than on paper and books. It allows you to have practice of what you will be applying these classes to in real life. Genetics, Organic Chemistry. Human Physiology (with lab), Physics 1 and 2 (with lab) and other upper level math and sciences.
Notice how most of these classes have some correlation with the human body in some sort of way. First, biology is taken to introduce you how living things work. You need this because you are going to be working with real living people and you need to know how they work. Many of these classes are taken to know the sciences first, but you start applying them to real life when you reach medical school. You are just learning the concepts of the subject before you apply them to humans. Biology now is just what you need to understand the concept of living things.
Chemistry is the same also, you need to know how to use the chemical concepts in math to apply it to neurology. Also, most of the human body functions are justified by chemistry and you can not know one without knowing the other. A lot of chemical reactions happen in the human nervous system and the balance of a human body. This also brings me back to biology, you need to know how the rest of the body reacts when there is a chemical imbalance and how it fixes that problem. They correlate with one another to help you prepare for medical school and use those two that work together to apply it to real life people.
Secondly, genetics is a useful topic to know because a lot of major afflictions that can affect nervous systems are h Neurologists need to understand how it works in order to track a patient’s medical history to justify diseases that happen. Gene mapping has become a popular thing to do in order to see what a patient will have in the future. Genetics is also one of best classes that is close to the human body and how it works in undergraduate school. The rest of the classes you learn how they are connected and work with the human in actual medical school, not pre-med.
Medical school is practically applying all the science courses you learned to the human body. Especially biology for neurologists since you have to know what is in the body what the body requires. It is important to learn these concepts and understanding them before you apply them to real life people. After undergraduate school, you would need to enter medical school, of course that is after you pass your MCAT to get accepted. You are required to get a doctor or medicine degree b attending. Most medical school programs last four years. The first two years in the program are basically anatomy and physiology classes.
The later 2 years are for clinical training and shadowing doctors and learning how to actually do your job. Since you are a neurology major, you would need to participate in a clerkship that lets you see specialized medical practices, like neurology. After you complete the medical school program, you would need to pass another exam. This allows you to practice and work with patients. They call this the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). All physicians (neurologists are physicians too) need to pass this before they practice medicine in the United States.
You can take this later on, like during the beginning of your residency, or right after you graduate from the medical school program. Some residency and internships do require the test when you apply for the place, so it is best to get rid of the test early after medical school than later. When you complete taking the medical license exam, you need to get an internship at a hospital to get experience in the job. This allows you to use the concepts you learned from undergrad school, applied to people in medical school, in real life.
It is good to earn a lot of experience before you become a legitimate doctor. The internship should be taken for one year. You practically shadow those who are professionals at the job. As an intern, they help you interact with patients and even treat them if they allow you to do. Let’s say that a patient has something wrong with their spinal cord, you would use your knowledge from undergraduate school and medical school to analyze the patient’s x-rays, behavior and body language to see what is wrong with them.
Biology and anatomy play a big part in analyzing a patient to diagnose them with whatever they have. You would also look at their genetic history, which you learned in college, to see if the problem they have gotten is genetic and traces back generations. A lot you learn in college and medical school can apply to the patients you have for a reason. These sciences help them fully understand and assess the situation that is happening to the patient. Even in an internship, you can learn how these concepts apply to real people.
Internships also help the doctor in the making learn how to deal with the pressure and the rush of adrenaline you get in a critical situation if you were to experience one in the time of your internship. After an internship, you would need to complete a residency program. You need to complete a 3 year neurology program. Residents would attend lectures and attend the rounds a doctor would make for a patient. They would also complete studies of clinical cases to evaluate the patient. This residency program allows for the aspiring doctors to gain experience with a lot of different neurologic disorders.
Residency is very similar to an internship, but the residency is more focused on the specialized skill rather than all the patients. Internships allows you to use the concepts you learn broadly whereas residency allows you to focus on mainly what you want to become. In the end, all you learn applies to the patient when you are diagnosing the patient. You can not treat a patient with a misplaced vertebrae if you do not know how the vertebrae normally looks like before it gets all messed up.
You need to study these things in order to see the difference and also how to solve the issue. Biochemistry helps you figure out what type of treatment they need. Not knowing how to do one thing can lead you to not knowing anything. A lot of the sciences you take correlate to the actual action of the job in the end. You need to know where things are and how they work and connect in order for you to properly evaluate the patient for a neurosurgeon to properly operate on them, Nothing is ever taught for no reason when you are in college.