John Launer: Why don’t we treat medical students like adults?

Around 25 years ago my wife and I embarked on an experiment. We had non-identical twins. From the start they had quite different personalities, challenging our ideas about genes and the environment. They went to the same primary school, where one thrived and the other felt like a fish out of water. By their own choice they went to separate secondary schools, with different styles that matched their differing needs.When they became adults, our experiment became instructive in another way. One twin did a social science degree and then trained in social work, while the other went to medical school. In terms of academic rigour and pastoral care, the early years of medical training were the far better of the two. But once the twins entered their future working environments—frontline social work for one, clinical training for the other—the contrast went the other way.From day one, our social worker offspring…
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