P = MD

Today we ate lunch with one of the pharmacy students and a pharmacist. While eating, the pharmacist said, "There are people who were in my class I just thought shouldn't be pharmacists. Do you see the same thing in medical school?"

Sadly you do. Medical education is interesting. The admissions criteria are difficult. There are lots of hoops to jump through. You have to look good on paper and in person. You have to weigh competing offers or pray that you are at the top of the wait list. But once you are in, you are in. Atrition from medical school, at least my medical school, is remarkably low. I can think of only one person who has actually been kicked out. I can think of at least 5-10 others who probably should be kicked out. But doing so is a death sentence to a career in medicine. After acquiring so much debt to get through school, it seems like the school bends over backwards to get you through to the end.

Some people pick fights with ancillary staff. Some people let their egos supercede their training. Some people just don't have what it takes to survive effectively in the system. Some people are just plain not mature enough to handle hearing the proper terms for certain anatomic regions without giggling. Somehow all of them become doctors.

Every now then urban legends crop up about so-and-so who did such-and-such on the wards. Hearing those things second hand through the grapevine make them hard to believe, but almost all gossip and rumor are seated in at least a little peice of truth. And what's even more incredible is the fact that almost universally everyone seems to have a story about one person they rotated with that did something so incredibly stupid that you wonder how that person ever got into medical school. What's funnier is that sometimes the entire class knows how that yahoo got into medical school. It's so prevalent it just leaves you wondering - was there ever a day that it was me who gave someone else something to talk about? I know when I hear stories about people, or witness it for myself, I don't really have the guts to bring it up to their face (i.e. coumadin anyone?). Am I the gunner that just makes people look bad without knowing it (you couldn't tell from my non-AOAness)? I'm that guy who left all the scut work for someone else to do? I'm I the class idiot who doesn't see what everyone else on the team sees?

I try to not be any of those things, but sometimes you just have to wonder. Am I?