burnout in medical education

The New York Times published an article yesterday about burnout and suicidal ideation among medical students. No one is surprised that medical school is hard. That’s perhaps an understatement. But combine the massive amount of information you are supposed to absorb with an ultra-competitive environment, and the thought that complete failure is just one slip-up away, and you have a group of students ripe for complete burnout or worse. The other implication of this is that such completely burned out students lose the ability or desire to empathize or effectively communicate with their patients. They are just trying to get through the day.

The question is whether anything can be done about this. Medical school is hard. There is a vast amount of information you simply have to learn in a limited period of time. Practicing medicine is hard. There are a million decision that need to be made, many of them a matter of life or death. There is nothing you can do to change that. But can or should medical school try to change or soften the environment in which the students learn?

The comments on this article were varied; everything from those who exhort students saying “Medical school is hard. Deal with it, quit whining, or find another profession,” to those who believe the model for how medical students and residents are educated must be completely turned on its head. Is it a matter of screening incoming medical students better to measure who will be able to handle the high-pressure environment or is it a matter of monitoring students mental health better before the stress gets dangerously high? But if such burnout impacts the students’ ability to ultimately practice medicine, most would agree that something needs to be done.

You can find the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/health/chen10-30.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

And the comments here: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/the-misery-of-the-med-student/