Opinion: Medical education needs to stop burning out students — now
Medical students must learn to take care of themselves before they will ever excel at caring for others.
Students’ time in medical school should help them grow and become insightful, caring doctors. Instead, medical education is somehow turning smart, gifted, enthusiastic applicants into exhausted and unhappy students who become interns, residents, and physicians at increased risk of depression and burnout.
I’m no stranger to the demands of medical school. My father and father-in-law were both doctors. I’m a pulmonologist, my wife is a nephrologist, and we have a son who is an internist and another who is in medical school. These issues are personal to me. As the dean of a medical school, they also focus my efforts to modify the learning environment to keep pace with new generations of students.
As difficult as
