Honor students at the High School for Medical Science in the Bronx NY, are getting a chance to take care of their first patients! The virtual ER is part of a 12 week online program developed by Studentsofmedicine.com's founder, Dr. Andres Jimenez. The goal of the program is to provide students with guidance, on how to prepare for college, and successfully get into medical school one day. But students also learn about disease, by watching lectures from real doctors, and reading assignments, then get an opportunity to diagnose and treat patients in the virtual ER. According to Dr. Jimenez, "Students reinforce what they learn in the course, and participate in virtual cases based on real life clinical scenarios I've seen in the ER, clinic or hospital! Each case is setup to help build confidence in the students by successfully taking care of patients, with real medical problems". All of the students who have participated in the virtual ER, love it, and would recommend it to others.

Every year over 40,000 students apply to medical school, in hopes of getting one of the 17,000 available spots. What this number doesn't tell you, is the number of students who get "weeded out" years before this step. In fact, millions of students usually start college every year with the dream of becoming doctors. By second year, more than half change majors because of difficult course loads. Classes like organic chemistry, and physics, push undergraduates to the limit, and unfortunately deter many students who would have been compassionate doctors. Another major obstacle to medical school is the MCAT, also known as the medical college admissions test. Most students take this test at the end of their junior year, and the score on the exam will make or break a student.

In the future, studentsofmedicine.com plans to make this course available to students around the country.