“It’s Part of Becoming a Physician”: Medical Students’ Reflections on Failure in Medicine

Failure is inevitable in medicine, yet the ideal of the infallible physician contributes to its stigma, leaving students unprepared and vulnerable to self-blame and distress. This study explored medical students’ experiences of failure in clinical settings and how their reflective essays captured changes in perspective. Thirty fourth- to sixth-year medical students at the University of Basel attended a 16 h workshop on failure (August 2021–February 2022) and wrote reflective essays before and after the workshop. Inductive qualitative content analysis examined 60 essays from 18 female and 12 male students, with Transformative Learning Theory serving as a sensitizing lens. Seven themes clustered around three tensions: individual fault versus systemic conditions, silence versus psychological safety, and fear of failure versus learning from failure. Participants described failures amid limited authority, information, or supervision, interpreting them as personal inadequacy. They reported emotional distress, tension between professional ideals and fallibility, and limited opportunities to discuss failure. Illustrative matched essay pairs showed how participants reconsidered their experiences after the workshop, including moving beyond self-blame toward a more systemic understanding of failure. Students valued the supportive environment for sharing experiences, highlighting the importance of addressing failure in medical education, ideally before clinical rotations, and ensuring appropriate supervision.