Medical Students and Medical School

ON A BRIGHT morning in late August in the early 1980s, a senior member of a medical school faculty attended an orientation session being held for incoming freshmen medical students. It made him feel good when he looked around the large lecture hall and saw the eager, alert, enthusiastic, and excited men and women from various walks of life and a variety of educational backgrounds. When the dean of the medical school spoke to the new freshmen students and indicated that they would have to work harder than they ever had before, the Faculty Member could almost sense them saying, That's OK! Let us at it. Medical school will be an exciting and rewarding experience and we're ready. We've been waiting for this for years. And when the dean talked about the obligations of medicine, what becoming a physician entailed, and some of the difficult problems with which they would