[catscratch]

My point was that medical school culture hasn't changed. It's been brutal for years.

The main difference between those going to med school and the 90s and now in my opinion is a mix of the expectations by students that the increase in level of difficulty should be comparable to the transition between high school and college, or college and graduate school. It's not, and it never was. High expectations have always been the rule.

However, for the past 25 years, there have been many more immigrants or children of immigrants that work their asses off competing harder and raising the bar.

The medical schools should not lower the bar to make it less stressful. Instead, we need more medical students to matriculate to P.A. programs and nursing programs, where they can do just as much good helping many of the same patients, sometimes making similar salaries. Eventually there will be more medical schools, which will help some. Or, maybe some of these doctors that feel that they had to go through too much can work their way up and teach so that they can give their students an easier individualized and sensitive education and see where that leads.

However, imo it should always be extremely difficult to get in and to succeed. That's the point. I don't think people should commit suicide. They should just quit.

[frozenport]

There is little evidence that hazing leads to better outcomes. Nor, does making medical school technically difficult leads to better outcomes. The US takes longer to train its medical professionals then most other places leading to more expensive care, and a overall deficit of doctors.

As somebody who works with pathologists, I don't find the academic part of medicine more difficult then say physics - but the pay is substantially different. This artificial labor shortage is protected by the systematic failures discussed in many of the HN comments.

None of these things are defensible.