Becoming a Doctor -- Critical-Incident Reports from Third-Year Medical Students

“Critical-incident reports” are short narratives of events judged to be particularly meaningful by participants in the events13. Our medical students wrote such reports at the beginning, in the middle, and in the latter part of their third year, while participating in a required course on the patient-doctor relationship. The students met weekly with faculty members in small groups46. Assignments for critical-incident reports were open-ended; students were asked to pick an event they felt was important to their learning and to write a short account of it.An example is this excerpt from a critical-incident report of . . .