You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family, and you can’t choose your learning team. But like family, your learning team can provide a vital support structure as you navigate medical school. I’ve gotten to meet quite a few of you through interviews, StORM, PMCF, and Preview events, and let me tell you: your classmates are awesome. You are smart, passionate, driven, and interesting people.
When we make mistakes that affect patients, we must focus on the patient and their family. Their pain, discomfort, or broken trust must take priority over our bruised egos. It is not any patient’s job to reassure us or put us back together when we are disappointed in ourselves. In moments of failure, we must lean on our support systems and call upon the muscles of grit and self-compassion that we have strengthened from past failures. We must give ourselves time, space, and energy to lick our wounds — but not at any of our patients’ expense.
It’s hard to imagine my well-spoken, wildly accomplished classmates feeling even a modicum of insecurity. Some of my classmates might think likewise of me, but the truth is quite the contrary.
The banning of tear gas in international warfare as an acknowledgment of its dangerous nature is a farce: most warfare occurs domestically, between civilians and the government forces who once swore to protect and defend those civilians.