I'm currently a fourth year medical student, and based on my experience you don't need anything from the med school in the first two years. The goal of the first two years of med school is to perform well on the USMLE Step 1 exam. My classmates and I found that you can do extremely well on this exam by using 3rd party resources exclusively. The consensus across the community of med students is that UWorld (a question bank), First Aid (text book full of relevant Step 1 facts), and Pathoma (Khan Academy style video series made by a pathologist from the University of Chicago) are all you need to succeed. Sure, the first two years of med school could lay a solid foundation to help you study for Step 1 at the end, but that foundation isn't absolutely necessary.
I go to a medical school that heavily emphasizes small group based learning. We have lectures, but they are optional and poorly attended. Most students only attend the small group sessions 3 times per week for the first two years of med school (largely because those sessions are required). At first, the small group sessions seemed helpful since there's more of a chance to have a discussion about difficult concepts and topics. After a while, however, you get the feeling that the small groups are just the blind leading the blind. Often these groups are led by fourth year medical students (such as myself) that are not nearly experienced enough to provide adequate guidance to first and second year medical students. Usually, the main takeaway students get from these sessions is that they should read First Aid, do their question bank, and watch Pathoma. All of which every med student knows to do anyway.
To be completely honest, as someone in medical school right now you definitely don't "need" the structure and materials that medical school lecturers and courses provide for those first two years. I however needed the structure and did not have the work ethic to do it on my own. Additionally the next two years of clinical learning most definitely require you to be at the hospital.
A professor of medical education once said to us something along the lines of 'The half life of the facts we tell you is about 6 years, so the actual content isn't necessarily that important. What is important is the language and that you learn to understand what you hear and read after you graduate.
5 years after graduation, I feel like I am only starting to truly appreciate that comment. I started medical training 11 years ago, and half of the stuff I read in books during first year was probably already known to be wrong.
The lectures we received were biased and incomplete, but they provided a largely up-to-date picture and, more importantly, a story.
The story definitely matters, I agree. But if you're good at making that story up as you read the book, why bother coming to class? I'd also argue that not everything is completely out of date. Only things like cytology or genetics and autoimmune disorders from what I can gather. Pathology is largely the same, as in the manifestations don't really change. You can get by studying a First Aid board review book from a few years ago and still pass step 1. Physiology doesn't really change, only treatments targeting the pathophysiology.
Medical Schools largely understand that everyone studies and learns differently and that's why they don't mandate you come to lectures. They're recorded for your own benefit as well. My professors would also provide several different learning methods throughout the preclinical courses to really hammer in those mainstay concepts regardless of how you learn. Be it quizzes, or team based learning, or straight lecture.
