Medical students' well-being

Abstract

Medical EducationVolume 28, Issue 1 p. 1-2 Free Access Medical students' well-being First published: January 1994 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.1994.tb02676.xCitations: 3AboutSectionsPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Very considerable attention is now being given to the medical school as a social environment. There is much wider recognition that the moral basis of medicine cannot be further explored, affirmed or taught if the policy and the administration of the medical school are ethically defective. A main component of education derives not only from the instruction provided but very significantly from the way teachers embody their professional calling (the role model they provide). The corresponding recognition is dawning that the teaching of medical ethics calls for the medical school itself to have moral purposes and ethical day-to-day functioning. The interface between teaching staff and medical students has in fact long been a focus of educational research. Three decades ago investigations at Cornell in New York found sufficient respect and courtesy on the part of teaching staff and the institution to consider that medical students, at that school, were explicitly perceived as colleagues and were responsibly inducted into the medical profession (Merton et al. 1957). In contrast, investigations from Chicago found that, at Kansas, medical students were disparaged and isolated as a body, distanced from their teachers (Becker et al. 1961). Medical schools, it has therefore long been recognized, can differ grossly in their staff-student relations. Since then medicine itself has changed, and so indeed has the medical profession, as well as the curriculum. The paradigm shift to which all specialties are adjusting, and all departments adapting, is the new concept of medicine, calling for the nature of medicine to be not curative alone, but equally concerned with prevention of illness and promotion of health. Difficult as this redefinition of medicine is proving for departments to accommodate, conceptually and in practical application, medical teachers are themselves challenged to reflect in their own professional behaviour and educational style the tenets of physical and emotional health. In a few countries the doctors have been exemplary, first with regard to smoking and more recently with public drinking. A matter which this Issue demonstrates as due for amelioration is the way medical teachers behave to their students, and the standing accorded to students in the medical school. The educational environment, the contributors demonstrate, falls drastically short of being healthy or even safe. The theme chosen by the American Medical Student Association for its 1992 Conference was Medical Training: A Matter of Survival? A court of law has recently found an army unit guilty and responsible for a soldier who died when drunk. Harmful drinking, drug taking and suicidal behaviour in medical students can no longer be regarded as their responsibility alone. Many medical schools do provide student health services and counselling facilities, but vastly more do not. When it comes to prevention, maintenance of healthy lifestyles is so far divorced from institutional responsibility that mere mention of stress limitation is likely to cause embarrassment to both staff and students. Misuse or maltreatment of medical students is not tolerable, neither when condoned by teachers as ‘character building’, nor when veiled by nostalgic masochism as teachers recall their own bygone hardships. Has the time come to formulate a students' charter? Political analogies have been in the news. In medical education we have learned that to reform the curriculum is not enough: the administrative structures have to be modified in accordance. The articles in this Issue document the case for attending to the social organization of the medical school. ‘Man hands on misery to man’(Philip Larkin observed in ‘This Be the Verse’); the process can no longer be unthinkingly accepted in medical schools. References Merton R.K., Reader G.G. & Kendall P. (1957) The Student Physician. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. CrossrefGoogle Scholar Becker H.S., Geer B., Hughes E. & Strauss A.S. (1961) Boys in White. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. Google Scholar Citing Literature Volume28, Issue1January 1994Pages 1-2 ReferencesRelatedInformation