People here start medical school quite young. Many are 18 or 19 by the time they enter medical school. Most have little in terms of life experience, especially nowadays when parents tend to be overprotective and sheltering.
Nowadays, many university has a new medical curriculum which puts medical students into clinical contact the very first year they come in.
I had a medical student who told me last week that during her first year, she was placed into my specialist oncology hospital for training in general clinical skills. The examination and history taking part was OK. What she couldn’t take was seeing people suffer from cancer. It was her first clinical contact, and emotionally she was far from prepared to see people who may be dying from cancer. The whole experience left her in tears, severely shaken.
She is now in final years, and attached to oncology again (her choice for special study module). Thankfully the fact she choose oncology for her optional attachment suggests that she wasn’t scarred for life by her first clinical encounter. Somehow early introduction to clinical contact can be tricky when the students aren’t really mature enough emotionally to deal with it. There must be some way to prepare them beforehand.
