I, as a med student, can tell you that I would not want to have at least 25% of my classmates as my doctor.
Now, I feel as though this is particularly profound coming from a place like NYMC, where I think we have a fairly "normal" group of people. In all seriousness, though, there are many, many people here who I don't think are qualified to become doctors who will be treating real, live patients. This is for a multitude of reasons, none of which are reflections of anyone's academic intelligence, or "book smarts", if you will. We all got into med school. We all clearly took on a big academic load in college, some of us at the top schools in the country (there are 11 Cornell grads in this class), and we all did at least reasonably well on the MCAT. Based on other factors, though, it saddens me that some of the people ended up here and in the process denied those spots to people that I know who are very deserving, but couldn't make it into US med schools.
Chief among the reasons I think these people shouldn't be here are the following:
1. Social ineptitude. This is probably the school's fault to some degree, as they interview people for a reason. Like, to attempt to conclude that these people are not psychotic serial killers (BU - take note). However, they also want to make sure that you are reasonably comfortable talking to people. Since, you know, patients are people. And you will probably have to tell at least one that they have cancer or some sort of other serious disease. It usually pays to be nice and have communication skills in that sort of situation. Sadly, many of my classmates may not have these necessary tools to, well, talk to people ("Eye contact, you say?!? What's that??").
2. Wanting to be in med school just so you can get that "MD" after your name. Luckily I haven't come across too many of these, but there certainly are a few. I think that this is really the most serious infraction here. In the case of social ineptitude, the person may care about other people but not communicate it well. If you're really just here for the prestige that the profession brings you, you clearly only care about yourself. Medicine is by definition altruistic; when that starts to decline, it's really compromising the pillars of the discipline itself. I really can't stand these people, especially those who shamelessly broadcast the fact that that's why they're here.
3. General douchiness. See #2, to some degree. Med school is supposed to be a humbling time - you realize how little you know and how far you need to go before you reach those glorious days of not having to study and/or do an attending's bitchwork 24/7. Confidence is good, but the people who come into med school with an obvious swagger are the bad guys. Don't act like you're better than everyone else - we're all in the same position here. Be on time, get your work done, allow yourself to be held accountable for what you do and any mistakes you make. We're all in this together, and given the number of residency programs, there's really only a small fraction of your classmates that you'll even be competing with in the end for whichever spots you want. Additionally, no patient wants a doctor who automatically assumes all of his or her ideas/opinions are the right ones - they want a doctor who will discuss things with them without being patronizing.
4. Being in it for the money. Similar to #2, but with varying degrees of "bad". You can genuinely care about people and still want to go into dermatology for the lifestyle. This is therefore more of a case-by-case basis. I still don't think going into something JUST for the money is the greatest idea (hence why you will never find me in derm or ophthalmology... well, that and my grades), but if you're smart enough to get into one of the tough specialties and you're able to make your patients feel happy and well-cared for, go for it!
Many of the people in these categories probably won't go into primary care anyway, which is good, but they can't all be shunted into non-interactive specialties like pathology and certain types of radiology. It's really too bad that there are so many of these people entering the medical profession. I hope that med schools can develop better screening in their interview processes to keep some of these people out. However, in the meantime I would say that everyone just needs to choose carefully when looking for a physician. There are those of us out there who are normal, I promise.
End rant.
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