The opinion piece “UC sets poor example for med students” (Viewpoints, Feb. 2), written by three rather courageous medical students, is timely and, except for several minor points as seen from my perspective, should be applauded.
While encouraging students to think for themselves about bioethics and social justice issues, I’ve often had doubts about our success – that is, that our contribution makes a particle of difference except to those who are already sensitive to what the profession truly entails. We teach medicine to students to provide them with the necessary tools to deal with their patients’ problems. We teach ethics to students to give them the intellectual tools to take care of ethical problems.
Hopefully the courses I teach help fledgling physicians to be more sensitive to ethical problems and to realize that the practice of medicine is more than just alleviating their patients’ physical symptoms. They need to be aware of the growing social inequities in our system that not only complicate their patients’ lives but can too often make the practice of good medicine either impossible or heroic.
As for one of my minor points of disagreement with the students’ opinion: The medical center does need a new ER, as it often provides the physician of last resort. As such, it is badly located and immensely overcrowded. It is news to me that UCD has refused some low-income patients, albeit that I am not surprised, given the peculiarities of financing medical care in this country today. One would hope, however, that the top priorities would continue to be the teaching of medical students and the care of patients. At a college of medicine, these two cannot be separated because unless we practice cutting-edge medicine we cannot, in truth, teach.
But when students see the university simultaneously raising tuition, selectively reducing access to patients and approving millions in bonuses to its hospital executives, they quickly get the message: “We talk the talk, but we do not walk the walk.” This makes a mockery of what we try to teach.
I admire these students for their courage. Even though people will say that their letter fails to change things, it may awaken people sufficiently to act together. Should medical schools across the country speak with one voice to tell the nation that we cannot under current financial circumstances teach medical students and, therefore, would not matriculate any further students after a particular date, our acting together may wake up some of our legislators.