Two days before my biology final last year, I lost some of my lecture notes. Luckily, I found someone in my class in the library and asked to borrow her notes. What happened next still shocks me to this day. A girl I didn't know who was sitting next to my acquaintance spoke up and said, "No, you can't have her notes." She repeated this several times until I finally left, almost in tears. Later, the girl I had directly asked found me to offer her notes and apologized for the behavior of her friend. "You know, she's just a crazy, competitive pre-med," she said, as if that would make her behavior okay.
It's no secret that many enter college with the idea of pursuing medicine, but a much smaller number graduate with these same aspirations. It is understandable that some will drop this career path because they find they have no interest in the field or don't wish to put in the time it takes to learn difficult concepts. But these reasons do not account for all the students who drop the pre-med track by sophomore year. Most importantly, there are many who no longer desire to become doctors because they don't want to be unhappy in dealing with such a highly competitive field.
It seems that the unhappiness doesn't stop with undergraduate pre-medical studies, or even with medical school. Doctors, who have finished their education and obtained their medical degree, have the highest rate of suicide of all professions. While the reasons for this troubling statistic are unknown, I would speculate that, at the very least, the cut throat competitive drive it takes to enter the medical field does not help to soothe any negative feelings these doctors might have.
While superficially it may seem that this issue is relevant only to aspiring doctors, the sad truth is that it affects their patients as well. It seems as though the current system might yield more and more doctors who are either severely depressed or so ambitious that they may be willing to hurt others for their own gain. Neither of these qualities will allow patients to receive the high quality care they deserve.
While it is absolutely important for doctors to be competent in their discipline, and the tough pre-medical and medical coursework certainly provides the scientific knowledge needed to diagnose and treat patients, it seems that we often neglect to consider the importance of doctors being emotionally intelligent as well.
While challenging Dartmouth pre-medical courses weed out the students who are unable to understand challenging scientific subjects, they simultaneously weed out extremely compassionate people who are perfectly capable of being successful in the classroom but simply do not want to deal with their highly competitive peers. This is highly problematic because these classes are potentially weeding out the best kind of doctors, ones that make patients feel comfortable and at ease. It makes little sense that the system praises students for understanding difficult concepts, working well under pressure and outperforming their peers on curved exams, but it does not examine whether these students also have the appropriate human qualities such as empathy that are needed to be a good doctor.
The path to a career in medicine needs a long and thorough re-evaluation. Is all of the coursework that packs so much material into such a short amount of time really necessary? Is a course grade in Math 8 or Chemistry 5 really indicative of whether a person would be a good doctor? If all this material is really that relevant to a practicing health care provider, maybe colleges and medical schools should further compartmentalize the topics into more courses over a longer time period. Perhaps if students had more time to engage with the material, there would be a more cooperative atmosphere that would not compel people to constantly be at each other's throats. Additionally, maybe medical schools should find better ways to measure the potential of their applicants possibly by administering some sort of psychological screening or observing an experimental set up in which applicants interact with patients in practical scenarios.
Students should not be discouraged from becoming doctors simply because of the competitive nature of the system. If we modified the system to promote less competition and more cooperation, perhaps we could create a next generation of doctors that is in line with what we want them to be intelligent and competent in the sciences, yes, but also kind and caring.
