Last week, the Association of American Medical Colleges announced dramatic changes to the Medical College Admissions Test. These changes, which will be implemented in 2015, plan to test aspects of psychology and sociology in addition to the exam’s traditional biological components, and will increase the length of the test from four to six hours. According to the association’s website, “the changes preserve what works about the current exam, eliminate what isn’t working, and further enrich the MCAT exam by giving attention to the concepts tomorrow’s doctors will need.”

The new MCAT exam will include new sections focusing on critical analysis, reasoning skills, and the psychological, social, and biological foundations of behavior. To make room for these extra sections, the test makers also eliminated a writing section included in previous years. ”These changes should signal that someone who was a psychology major, or a cross-cultural studies major, or an English major has as much potential to enter medical school as someone who majored in chemistry,” Dr. Stephen Ray Mitchell, the Dean for Medical Education at Georgetown Medical School, said.

Mitchell said the whole medical school application process is a “system that, at a lot of different levels, is flawed.” Georgetown Medical School alone received about 11,700 applications last year for a total of 196 slots, making it the sixth most selective medical school in the United States.

However, in such a competitive environment, admissions counselors lack adequate time frames to holistically review each applicant. Admissions counselors must instead resort, largely, to numbers––grade point average and MCAT scores. The decision made by the Association of American Medical Colleges strives to replace this balance between scores and an overall behavioral understanding that they believe a doctor should possess.

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Dr. Matthew Levy, an associate professor of general pediatrics at Georgetown’s School of Medicine, was recently chosen to join a federal health policy program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and supported by the Institute of Medicine.

Levy, who also serves as the medical director of community pediatrics at GU Medical Center, will spend a year working with the White House and Congress, advising officials on health care policy.

“I hope to bring to Capitol Hill all the experience I have gained working at Georgetown and provide an understanding of the real challenges our children and families face in reaching care and achieving better health,” Levy said in a press release.

During his time at Georgetown, Levy has established multiple programs aimed towards improving access to health care for high-risk children, including the KIDS mobile medical clinic, a medical student-staffed clinic based out of a homeless shelter, and a community-oriented mental health program.

Photo: Georgetown University

On Tuesday, the Baltimore Sun reported that a Maryland inspector found 40 body bags—and their occupants—illegally stored in the garage of a Prince George’s County funeral home.

The shocking part of the story? Many of the bodies came from Georgetown’s School of Medicine.

The University contracted the Chambers Funeral Home & Crematorium “to take its anatomical donor remains for cremation,” according to Sun reporter Jacques Kelly, who spoke with Dean for Medical Education Stephen Ray Mitchell.

“The School of Medicine’s contract with the Chambers Funeral Home specifically outlines the school’s requirements that the remains be treated in a ‘respectful and organized manner.’ It appears that this was not the case in this instance,” Mitchell wrote in a released statement.

William Chambers, a co-owner of the funeral home, claimed that the contract’s specifics lead to many bodies being delivered at once, hence the pile of bodies.

“It was agreed to, but discouraged,” Chambers said of the deliveries, according to the Sun.

(Editor’s note: Here’s where you stop reading if you’re eating now, plan to eat soon, or ever want to eat again.)

According to the state inspector’s notes, the body bags were discovered in a “large pile, approximately 12 by 12 feet … on the floor of the garage in front of a removal van.”

The inspector also noticed “visible leakage from the body bags” and noted the “a pungent odor” that presumably came from the decaying bodies.

(Editor’s note: GROSS.)

Photo from Flickr user photographybycalvincropley used under a Creative Commons license.