Opinion: Medical students lose in the research arms race for residency slots
“Going to medical Spanish class really isn’t worth my time. I’d rather use the time to do research,” one of my classmates told me during the first week of my first year of medical school.
Such a comment was my introduction to the publish-or-perish environment that is increasingly pervasive amongst medical students. Before then, I had known publish-or-perish as something for those seeking tenure at universities. I believed that medical school was a place where I would be learning about the human body and learning bedside manners through classes like medical Spanish that had patient-actors for students to interact and communicate with.
