leading vs ???

When pre-meds apply to medical school, along with their personal statement, grades and MCAT scores, they are usually asked to describe previous "leadership" experiences. Schools love that stuff, as it shows confidence, initiative and passion. Without some sort of leadership experience, you are unlikely to get into most medical schools.

It is surprising then, that when you finally find yourself in medical school, most of the people around you are trying to keep their heads down. There is a certain "herd mentality" that lonecoyote has pointingly documented, but there is also a general, almost suffocating apathy and fear of conflict. Grown men and women (granted, in short white coats) look the other way when residents make shortcuts on their patient's care, when attendings throw shit in the OR because that anger management class didn't fit into their schedule, or when nurses make fun of their patients. Why? Because all these former leaders suddenly find themselves in positions where they are no longer on top, and where actual leadership might come with negative consequences.

Recently, on our school listserve, a discussion was started by a student about the health care crisis in America. He wasn't being pedantic, he wasn't throwing out extreme, unsubstantiated arguments, he simply referred students to an upcoming health care rally and evidence-based research about the current state of health care in this country.

His email, as would be expected in any free country with the right to exchange ideas, brought on points and counterpoints. Students were having a discussion about health care, and everyone was being included because the listserve went to every medical student at our school.

One or two medical students began to protest the discussion, with repeated emails to the entire listserve, and personal -though jovial- attacks on some of the people in the discussion. You could almost sense the collective body of the school cringing every time the email string was continued. I say that, because I cringed, too.

That made me sad. If we can't discuss relevant, potentially contentious, issues with our own collegues, people with similar backgrounds, culture and training, how can we possibly have any real discussion in this country? How can we possibly learn from each other and find some sort of compromise?

In medical school, you go through a lot of shit together with your classmates. I would not dare to compare it to a unit of soldiers in a war because the intensity and gravity of the latter experiences is, well, not comparable, but it is true that the stress and collective struggle creates a bond. And just like in a war, we don't like to let 'issues' get in the way of getting along.

The problem is that somewhere, sometime recently in this country and culture, "getting along" has started to mean "not discussing anything with anyone that they don't already believe", which is not so far away from "not thinking" and "not learning". And without the last two, pretty much means "not acting" and "not changing".

And where does that leave us? Medical school did not recruit us so that it could quell our leadership activities ("Oh look, there's another leader! Grab him! Squash him!") And yet, many medical students would rather bury their heads in the sand than allow a discussion directly related to their future careers - and the health of their patients. Even fewer would actually engage in any political activity that has anything to do with these issues - on either side of the aisle.

On a larger scale, this is not something specific to my medical school. Contentious political issues are not credibly addressed by the media, people know better than to talk politics at dinner parties, and there is this huge suffocating belief among the general public that if we just hide our heads under our pillows everything everywhere will be OK. It is unpatriotic to question the war, to wonder what the fiscally conservative President has done with our surplus, to ask why we have the worse health care system of all first world nations.

If that's really the case, then what is the point of being civil to each other if we don't dare practice the very civil liberties this country was founded on?