We’re Being Taught to Care for Everyone But Ourselves

November 6, 2024. The moment I (Agorua) wake up, I know something has shifted. I want to stay home and cry, but that is not the reality of a second-year medical student. I peel myself from my bed, hide the evidence of sleep deprivation and worry, and head out the door to my shift at the food pantry.

I meet my friend there, who is just as devastated. We sit in silence and weep until she finally says, “I need to get my tubes tied.” During our downtime, we search for options in rural Tennessee. She makes an appointment for a consult. It offers a flicker of hope, though the emptiness lingers.

After our shift at the pantry, we attend a mandatory lecture on physician burnout; scheduled, like everything else, without pause. Our world does not pause for grief, fear, or uncertainty. Exams. Board prep. Extracurriculars. Volunteering. Stay connected. Exercise. Don’t fall behind. Don’t fall apart.

In medicine, even moments of collective fear and grief are forced to compete with productivity. This moral whiplash, what medicine asks of you versus what it allows you to be, breeds disillusionment early in training. We spend the first couple of years in medical school building foundational knowledge in anatomy, physiology, and pathology, all in preparation for the clinical years. When we first enter hospitals and clinics, we are filled with excitement to care for patients and apprehension about our ability to do so. As we interact with patients from our communities, we realize that many social factors impede a person’s ability to be well, often leaving us feeling powerless to help.

Medical training is defined by dissonance: we are expected to champion the well-being of patients while navigating a system that routinely compromises our own.

That tension does not exist in isolation. We are training during a time of widespread social and political instability. We see its effects in clinics and communities: patients are delaying care because they feel unsafe, struggling to afford medications, or carrying emotional burdens shaped by events far beyond the exam room. Minorities are being terrorized in their communities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our tax dollars are being used to help fund conflict abroad. We look around, and almost everyone is just moving along as if everything is okay. We all feel powerless to do anything without the masses on our side.

Students absorb this. We carry our own fear, grief, and uncertainty while trying to keep pace with a demanding curriculum and growing pressure to build competitive residency applications. We plow through the anti-science and anti-education rhetoric in an effort to become the physician that our communities need. Even if we have ideas for ways to advocate, we don’t have the time. Even when we feel emotionally depleted, the pace rarely slows. This takes a toll.

And then there is the pressure to appear resilient. In medicine, burnout is often treated as an expected part of the journey rather than recognized as a serious warning sign. Burnout is discussed frequently in residency and beyond, but medical student mental health remains comparatively quiet. It is often acknowledged only after students reach a breaking point.

Wellness cannot begin and end with reminders to practice self-care. Institutions must create environments where students feel safe asking for help, where vulnerability is not mistaken for weakness, and where mental health is treated as essential to professional development.

We all have moments that remind us of why we chose to study medicine, such as a patient remembering our name or a family member thanking us for listening. We find reminders of our passion and compassion while calming a patient before a procedure or standing up for someone who felt ignored in the healthcare system. Sometimes it is as simple as sitting with someone who does not want to feel alone. These moments are small but they matter. They remind us that our empathy and kindness still matter. They help make the demands of training worth it. They remind us that medicine is still deeply human, and that compassion remains one of the most important things we can offer. That humanity deserves space in medical education.

Medical schools need to recognize that caring is not something to be managed or minimized — it is something to be supported. This means creating spaces where students can be honest about our limits, where mental health is treated as essential to our training, not separate from it. It also means giving students real opportunities to be involved, to learn how to advocate, and to build skills in navigating the systems that sometimes feel out of reach.

The challenges we face now are not going away. This cycle will continue. However, if we are taught not just how to treat disease, but how to sustain ourselves and stay engaged, we will become better physicians for it. Feeling powerless now doesn’t mean we will always be. It means we are paying attention. If we stay present, stay informed, and stay involved, we can turn that concern into something meaningful for both our patients and ourselves.

Rather than scheduled sessions to talk about burnout, we call for more open dialogue regarding mental health for healthcare trainees and providers, with the goal of allowing us to remain engaged in advocacy spaces and ultimately the fight against the inequities our patients face.