Smartest or Nicest?

The NYT ran an article recently on using personality tests as part of the criteria for medical school entrance. Apparently they gave personality tests to 600 students to look for which traits correlated with future success. Big surprise, those who stressed easily did poorly and those who were extroverted did well.

The thing is - I don't agree with their proposition that doctors all need to be super-nice people. Sure, a physician should treat you with respect and courtesy, but you're not there to make friends. When did it become an expectation that your doctor also be your confident and therapist?

Let's put this another way. If you found out tomorrow that you had cancer or HIV or needed a triple bypass - do you want the nicest kid in the class or the smartest?

I know what you're thinking, can't I have both? Sometimes yes. There are some very smart people who are also very friendly. But the traits that get you through training are not the traits that win friends. In medical school and residency you sacrifice a lot of your personal time to your training; thus your relationships are neglected. The divorce rate for doctors is above the national average. You have to be willing to study for hours alone - be independent and driven. The decisions you make and their consequences are weighty; they require detachment and objectivity.

Everyone's job has stress, but not everyone will find themselves leaving their son's baseball game because their pager went off. Your patient is in respiratory failure because they developed graft vs host disease after their bone marrow transplant, which you recommended and without which they would have died. And it's not just cancer doctors - it's the primary care physician whose patient has a hypertensive crisis or a stroke. It's the ER doctor that has to call the organ donation team when a 24 year old comes in from a motorcycle crash. It's the pediatrician who pronounces the unlucky child who got meningitis or the ob/gyn that tells a first-time mom that her baby has hydrocephalus. Every doctor sees these cases in training and no practice is immune from tragedy.

Why is the system built this way? Why do we make it such a stressful process to become a physician? Are we turning good people into bitter ones? I say no. I think we're pushed because there is a lot of medicine to learn and not enough time to learn it in. We spend two years in lecture halls learning biochemistry, anatomy, pharmacology and histology - no patients in sight - a lot of which we won't use in everyday practice. But those years are the difference between a doctor and everyone else on the medical team. They are they difference between memorizing a standard protocol to treat a disease and understanding on a molecular and cellular level how the disease and it's treatments work. You can't reassemble an engine if you don't understand how the parts work.

I promise that when I graduate and begin practicing that I will make every effort to treat you with respect. I will explain my reasoning and answer your questions. I will be professional and courteous. But I will not be your therapist or your best friend. I will not hold your hand or cry with you. It will have to be enough that you had the smartest kid in the class, trained in one of the best schools, using all of their intellect to save you.