Dear Editor,
Medical students, junior doctors and senior doctors are highly motivated conscientious and intelligent. The health systems are underfunded, under-resourced and litigious. People are now more knowledgeable demanding and fast to complain? This is a potent cocktail of stress, burnout and demoralisation. Increased mental illness in the profession is no surprise.
Really the solution is to fix the system issues – but it is unlikely this will ever happen, however it should be constantly tried. The other part is to screen candidates for medicine. In the army those more likely to get PTSD are screened out if possible. Students need to know what they are getting into – a life of serious demands, risks and long hours, but also a very rewarding career for those who enjoy patient contact and scientific and clinical endeavours and team work.
Selecting people on academic results alone is flawed. Having a group of highly intelligent doctors in substandard hospitals with overcrowding and ambulance queues, won’t work. What may work is having a group of good enough doctors with people skills, team skills and a sense of humour. However the most suitable doctors will burn-out in prolonged stressful thankless and demanding work environments. The humanity of the student and doctor should be a good fit for the work involved and so student selection needs to be much broader and academic results should be just a part of a wrap-around assessment of suitability for a life in medicine.
The NHS needs to look after its most valuable resource – the young students and doctors and training bodies need to really take the widespread unrest among students and doctors to heart and “do something about it.”
Re: Do medical schools care? Rethinking compassion within medical training