Building residency training from scratch: What would you do?

Back in the day, legend has it that when space programs were just developed, NASA soon discovered that ball-point pens will not write in zero-gravity. Unfazed, NASA spent a large amount of money developing pens that will work in space, while the Russians simply used pencils.

It turns out that this legend is only half true, but the lesson remains – sometimes, we get bogged down trying to solve a problem within its existing framework. Sometimes, it’s better to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

The problem I propose is residency, how our future doctors are trained. Imagine a shearing shed. On one end stands a line of plump, happy, fluffy sheep – metaphorically these are bright-eyed medical students, healthy, well-rested from the last year of light coursework in medical school, excited to finally be at the forefront of medical care.

After 3 or more years in the residency, the shearing shed spits out a scrawny, shivering ghost of a bald sheep – these are your doctors. They are burnt out, fatigued, unhealthy graduating medical residents usually without the same self-esteem, optimism or hunger for knowledge they used to have. This generalization has truth in it – poems, books, other forms of media have tried to describe this gruesome experience. I, for one, have never heard anyone said that they would want to do residency for the rest of their life, as a real job, because they love it so much and they never want to quit.

Maybe that is too much to ask – not every job in the world creates that kind of enthusiasm. But, considering the importance of the task at hand, should we not attempt to train doctors in a way that by the end, the sheep remain plump, happy, fluffy and, most importantly, medically smarter than before the shearing?

I propose that we build this alternative training program from scratch, so we can dream bigger without the constraints in the current system of what can and cannot be. My proposal assumes happy, fluffy sheep – meaning caring, upstanding medical students looking to learn real medicine so that they can provide the best care for patients on the job – this is not always true but that’s the topic for another day. With that assumption, a better training program will have the following characteristics:

1. Autonomy. Learners should be able to dictate the content and the manner in which they want to learn medicine.

1.1 Content. Not every medical student wants to be a pulmonologist, so why does every medical resident in the same program need to do the same amount of ICU time? Learners should tailor the type and duration of rotations to fit their career goals.

1.2 Manner. How many current residents, laboring in the trenches, work with ACGME on work hour regulations? I am going to tempt fate here and guess zero, or at least a very small minority if that, because there simply is not enough time in the day. So why are people sitting in an office far removed from residency deciding when a bunch of grown-up adults should take a nap, go home, come to work? Shouldn’t 25-something future doctors know when they’re at their best learning and when they need to take a break? If your future doctors need to rely on someone else to manage their work day, would you really want them to be your doctor, especially out after training when there is no one and nothing telling them when to take a nap, go home, come to work? The new work hour regulation is really misguided and quite a shame, because being able to follow patient progression over a 28-hour call is priceless – I wrote more about work hour regulations here.

2. Service vs education. There is a time for service in every doctor’s life, but residency should not be one of them. Medical students may have as little as 1 year to learn everything they need to know to be able to treat you on their own without supervision. None of that time should be spent learning the computer system or filling out paperwork, because many people can fill out paperwork without spending 4 years in medical school – it is low-yield. Progressive medical clinics hire scribes to write notes, enter orders, fill out paperwork, so doctors can focus on patients, look at them during conversation and treat them like respectable human beings. The diversity of cases is also important, which is why many reputable programs have medical admitting residents scouting for cases with educational values. There will be time to take care of patients admitted for pain control or alcohol withdrawal in the real world, but if a full-fledged doctor has never seen a case of pituitary adenoma during their training, would you trust him/her to care for you if you have one?

3. Evaluation. To become a full-fledged doctor, which is the goal of residency, you only need to spend a certain amount of time among a number of required rotations, and pass a multiple choice test. Failing other types of evaluations beyond these do not necessarily stop one from becoming a doctor. Other qualitative evaluations are performed mostly by doctors, a few by nurses, none (in my program) by patients, which seems backwards to me. It is important to know what your colleagues think, but isn’t it more valuable to see if your customers are satisfied? I don’t know of other thriving service industry where close to 0% of evaluations come from customers.

4. Equality. Residency is a monopoly, where medical students cannot become doctors without going through it. As a result, residents usually get the short end of the stick in everything that they do: slower computers, fewer medical assistants, more rectal exams. Being treated as a second class citizen should never be a rite of passage. Equality means respect, and the hidden curriculum in residency currently teaches us that it is acceptable to treat those with less experience without respect.

5. Add yours here. Wipe the slate clean and dream about how you want to make your doctors. One day, someone might actually listen and make your dreams come true.