Triple whammy

There are problems with medical training, philosophical and practical, too numerous to list, and I have journaled extensively about being victimized by many of them. Starting my fellowship, I will still be a medical trainee, but will also be a few rungs farther on the hierarchy of those who teach the trainees. On an academic level, I’ve become interested in how health care providers are trained to think about disability and chronic illness, both through official curricular components, and through the often damaging “hidden curriculum.” I’d like to work on the general issue of attitudes about disability among physicians and other providers, which is a big problem and one which may well be my research direction of a lifetime. As a smaller, but related problem, I’ve begun to think about the way medical students and interns, especially, are trained to conceptualize disability during a clinical encounter, and to see if there are ways to help develop an approach that will lead to better understanding for the trainee, and better care for the patient. And in thinking about how residents, even the best meaning residents build their knowledge and attitudes about chronic conditions, ( I’ve realized just how well designed the system is to create three related problems. )