Abuse of Medical Students

Abstract

To Editor.— I read COMMENTARY by Henry K. Silver, MD, Students and Medical School (1982;247:309). From my vantage points as a student who has been involved at state and national levels of organized medicine and as a senior at terminal stage (pun intended) of undergraduate medical education, I share author's concern for students' dehumanization at hands of system entrusted with their training. Dr Silver's analogy between the battered child syndrome in foster homes and depressed students in medical school, while amusing, is not farfetched. Needless to say, causes of such depression are manifold. Depersonalization occurs early, with paucity of faculty-student personal interaction owing to large class size and to endless string of computer-graded examinations preparatory to more impersonal national boards. Burgeoning volumes of knowledge must be mastered rapidly, yet with realization that much will become obsolete within