A Medical School More Like Hogwarts
By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.
It’s been clear for several years now that while aspiring doctors may start medical school as happy and as healthy as their non-doctoring peers, four years later they aren’t.
More than 20 percent end up with depression, more than half suffer from burnout, and in any given year, as many as 11 percent contemplate suicide. All of these statistics, of course, bode poorly for patients. Doctors who are burned out are more likely to make errors and to lose sight of the altruism that led them to go into medicine in the first place.
Fortunately, the subtext of this growing body of data — that there is something toxic about the medical education process — has not been lost on the educators who run this country’s medical schools. Some have hired mental health experts for their institutions, created counseling centers and set up confidential Web sites and hot lines; others have developed elective courses in meditation and mindfulness, switched from letter grades to pass-fail systems and revamped class schedules to foster better work-life balance.
Despite the good intentions, their efforts continue to be stymied by one thing: Students aren’t participating. As one educator recently told me, “I keep seeing the same 10 students at all these events, and I’m not even sure they’re the ones we need to be reaching.”
But one medical school, Vanderbilt, in Nashville, appears to be succeeding, with a Student Wellness Program that includes activities like yoga classes, community service events, healthy cooking classes, forums on nutrition and sleep, and a mentoring program that pairs senior students with newer ones. The key to its success? Empowering and partnering with those who have the most at stake — the medical students themselves.
Aside from an annual daylong retreat and a weekly medical humanities course, “most of the ideas are generated by the students themselves,” said Dr. Scott M. Rodgers, the associate dean of medical student affairs, who started the program with a group of students six years ago and continues to be its guiding force. “We just try to come up with any necessary money.”
One example of this unique collaboration is the program’s college system, which assigns students to one of four “colleges,” each with its own set of faculty advisers. Instituted nearly five years ago and intended simply as an improvement over a traditional but more random advising program, the new system was also set up in a way that allowed Vanderbilt students to introduce innovations.
They ran with it. Drawing on cultural cues that resonated with their peers — in this case the Harry Potter stories — they took an active role in naming the colleges after former medical school deans and imbued each with a particular personality. Completing the picture were artfully designed crests, designated college colors and devised mottos in Latin that range from the more noble (“Primus Inter Pares,” or “First Among Equals”) to the tongue-in-cheek put-down (“Commodum Habitus Es,” or “You Have Just Been Owned”).
As college loyalties began to develop, students organized friendly competitions that promoted healthy habits and community service. These events culminated four years ago in the first College Cup, a now annual weekend affair where pride runs deep. Amid bagpipes and a marching band, colleges vie to outdo one another in events like a 5-K run, an “Iron Chef”-style cooking competition and a trivia contest.
“These programs keep you from putting your whole self-worth on the next exam,” said Kathleen Weber, a first-year student who was also quick to point out the superiority of her own college, Batson.
There are critics, however, who charge that with so much to learn in so little time, medical students — and their future patients — would be better served if they expended more, not less, effort on studies. Others have voiced concern that students end up feeling a “reverse pressure” to choose extracurricular activities over studying.
But proponents are quick to counter that medical students in general aren’t people who must be persuaded to study. What they need is encouragement to balance academic dedication with the self-care that will sustain them in the long run. “You can’t keep running on fumes,” said Dr. Johanna N. Riesel, a former medical student at Vanderbilt now in her second year of surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “You have to learn how to maintain some sense of equilibrium and sanity in a relatively insane process.”
While no one yet knows the long-term effect of Vanderbilt’s innovations – or, for that matter, of any programs designed to promote “wellness” — Dr. Rodgers and his colleagues and students at Vanderbilt remain committed to their initiatives. For them, the implications of medical student depression and burnout are simply too important to ignore.
“It’s a challenge for anyone to stay healthy and happy,” Dr. Rodgers said. “But when doctors are able to stay healthy and happy, that means patients get physicians who are more compassionate and selfless. They end up with doctors who really have the energy to invest time in them.”
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