Chief Complaint: no room for failure

In the early parts of medical school, we were focused on basic sciences which include anatomy, physiology etc. However, the whole thing's organized by organ systems, making it some weird hybrid of problem-based learning and the traditional approach. We're told the system's unique to my school, at least in the Philippines. But this is actually a topic for another time. What I'm here to discuss is something else entirely.

During the first two years of medical school, the only learning we had in terms of clinical skills was through the conduct of demo-return demo sessions (wherein a consultant first demonstrates the skills followed by students trying (sometimes miserably) to replicate them), eventually culminating into OSCEs (will discuss these in the future). We also had to do several patient interviews during small group discussions (SGDs). Many first years would consider the ward works in Neurology midway through the 2nd semester to be highlights of the freshman year because they're the first time we're actually required to do complete history and physical examination (especially neurological) of a patient in the wards. This is actually the staple of clinical learning during 2nd year.

My biggest issue back then was that I felt our professors/consultants were dismayed and disapproving with errors in all forms (e.g. forgetting to perform a maneuver or performing it incorrectly, missing out on an important detail in the history). I understand that it's probably just to safeguard our future patients from incompetence, but I do think that mistakes and failures could have been handled in a more constructive manner. I've seen firsthand how this stigma on failure actually removes our focus on the patient and become more concerned with ticking off everything we need to do on our lists. We were more concerned with performing rather than learning. And at such an early stage of our development as physicians, I believe learning well would be much better for our future patients.

Now that I'm in my 3rd year and transitioning into hospital-based learning from classroom-based, I appreciate the sentiment that we're given room to make mistakes because they understand we're just starting. They understand that more than anything, we need guidance, not a reprimand. I hope that even in the early years, students are allowed to fail because every year, I see a new batch enter medical school with an even greater aversion to failure. Every new batch also looks more stressed than the previous one.

I do not deny that there is growth in being able to perform well, but I believe giving everyone some space to fail is akin to exponentially increasing everyone's space to not just grow but to grow well and become better human beings.