Entitlement

I'm daily made aware of a subsystem of medical education in the U.S. that is predicated on access, sense of entitlement and money. There are many such examples in the South where students from private, for profit institutions like Krass University and others pay exorbitant fees that amount to bribes, to practices and centers to exclusively allow only their students to attend clinical rotations and receive education thus excluding other students, programs and schools.

This sense of entitlement, bought and paid for with huge tuition, has the students feeling they have the right to be given something which others believe should be obtained through effort. This extends into match and residency as well for many of these students who become unrealistic with expectations of favorable treatment or automatic compliance with theirexpectations. But they are a cheerful bunch, willing to bad mouth and step on any other student in their way.

Lovely huh? Perpetuation of the competitive, almost manic, approach to medical education unlikely to promote anything but more entitled doctors with no sense of team work. It is nearly impossible to create an empathic, caring physician under these conditions.

The U.S. medical education system is drastically in need of review, overall and possibly trashing. But I sense nobody is willing or able to live beyond the system that seems to have a life of it's own...open to payoffs, lured by money, entranced by funding. And further privatization of the medical system is not the answer. It is in fact, part of the problem.