PANACEA 2020

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Recovering Medical School My medical school, like many, was forced by COVID-19 to send students home to study online. During lockdown, I kept coming across articles about other people’s experiences of lockdown, raving about how it gave them space- space they hadn’t had for a long time or even realised they needed- to reflect on the way they were leading their lives, and maybe consider ways they could better align their daily practices with their values. This got me thinking - maybe this forced reflection period could be useful for med schools too. Maybe there needs to be more reflection going on about what needs to change. 28
I don’t know about your medical school, but mine often raises this concept of ‘student wellbeing.’ We receive regular reminders that we need to be ‘looking after ourselves’ and should contact faculty if we need help. Over the years however, I have been increasingly frustrated by the fact that, despite us learning in our course that prevention is the best cure, this hasn’t extended to med school’s approach to student wellbeing. Sure, they offer counsellor access when you’ve fallen apart, but they seem to pay less attention to preventing the falling apart process from happening in the first place. Medicine has never been known as the easiest course to get through, but I’ve found myself wondering so many times over the past years how a course designed by some of the brightest minds in the world is struggling to educate the next generation of doctors without damaging them with stress and anxiety, and encouraging in them a fear of exposing any imperfection or vulnerability. I feel very lucky to get to be taught by some of the most talented and knowledgeable physicians and medical professionals in the country. My admiration for these teachers is slightly dimmed however, every time I have to hear the phrase, in response to student inability to answer a question that has been posed, ‘You should know this.’ In my more tempestuous moods, I can’t help but wonder about the inherent ridiculousness of the statement. Do our teachers think we enjoy not knowing the answer? Do they think a bunch of neurotic perfectionists (guilty as charged!) need more shame heaped on them? Do they think they need to have their impossibly high standards for themselves raised even more impossibly high? Now of course the majority of educators are wonderful humans who, if asked, would no doubt answer negative to all the above. But I also think the majority have been educated in med schools in times when shame and perfectionism was rampant and encouraged, and public humiliation used as a weapon to force med students to study harder. I guess some habits and ways of thinking die hard. Another thing that seems to occur regularly in the lectures and tutorials I attend in hospital and at university is teacher-led laughing at wrong answers. I cringe internally and feel so bad every time I see a student give an answer, and watch the lecturer imply that the answer is so wrong, it is funny, thereby implying the student is a joke for suggesting it. Ridicule doesn’t have to be performed by the malicious; sometimes it comes from a simple inability to remember back to a time when questions that seem obvious to you now were anything but. The same lecturers I see laughing at ‘silly’ answers that have been offered by well-meaning students are also ones that complain that students in their classes don’t seem to want to speak up and answer questions they pose to the class. Hmm, I wonder why that could be… But do we want students to be trained to see not knowing the answer as a weakness that must be hidden at all costs? Is it not possible that such an attitude may lead to issues down the line in a clinical setting with doctors feeling unable to admit to their colleagues that they feel unsure about how to manage a patient? Medical schools emphasise that patient safety and wellbeing should be the priority; maybe for this to be ensured, doctors need to be comfortable from the time they are still med students with not knowing the answer, and be able to be out and proud about this. Right now, as we think about how to fix things so that we exit the COVID-19 era better than we entered it, let’s spare a thought for how we can help medical schools to recover from the culture of shame that has gripped them for far too long. 29
Page 1: When the Dust Settles Panacea
Page 4 and 5: C O Contents Truth in a Time of Cov
Page 6 and 7: Dear pre-COVID-19 Me, I’m here to
Page 8 and 9: Photo Credit: Gabrielle magalski Su
Page 10 and 11: Generation Z, BLM, and What it Mean
Page 12 and 13: to do in Things lockdown Artwork Cr
Page 14 and 15: From COVID to the Coral Sea; An Ech
Page 16 and 17: How has medicine and the world chan
Page 18 and 19: Human Yashaswini Connection Makkoth
Page 20 and 21: at the Medicine Movies Dr Peter McL
Page 22 and 23: The Elephant Man (1980) David Lynch
Page 24 and 25: Awakenings (1990) Wow! What a movie
Page 26 and 27: Wit (2001) This American, made for
Page 28 and 29: Vera Drake (2004) Vera is a well-me
Page 32 and 33: Minds of Medicine An interview by K
Page 34 and 35: How has this experience changed you
Page 36 and 37: Danger, the first element of Basic
Page 38 and 39: Photo Credit: Gabrielle magalski Th
Page 40 and 41: The fight Against Gender Based Viol
Page 42 and 43: At this point, we really need to fo
Page 44: 2 0 2 0 e a c a n a P

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