The Mystique of Medical Training

FOR CENTURIES, the physician has been viewed by his community as beyond reproach and virtually infallible in his decisions, which often involve matters of life and death. Such esteem has helped to create a mystique that, while reassuring to patients, can lead to great pressure on each new generation of physicians. Already present when the young physician begins his training is an obsession for perfection that can be promulgated in the house-staff training period and that continues to grow in practicing and academic physicians who function under often inhumane stress as they strive to heal and care for humanity. House officers are required to adapt constructively to the many stresses they face in the practice of medicine. Confrontation with illness and death, long hours and inadequate time with families, a prolonged period of apprenticeship, increasing complexities of medical technology, new frontiers in medical ethics, and the burgeoning volume of medical