Nasty, brutish, and short

Those are the words Thomas Hobbes used to describe the state of nature in Leviathan.  It also seems like an indicator of what residency will be like, with an important modifier: "long."

There is a dark side to medical training a lot of people outside of medicine are not familiar with, other than the stereotypical angry surgeon.   A lot of us in our training have experienced challenging personalities, and a lot of us have seen students and residents be mistreated, mainly in the form of a snide remark by an academic superior.  It looks to be even harder as a resident as you're a younger doctor with less experience and full responsibility. 

I've seen cases where residents were humiliated during their presentation at morning report, or during their patient presentations.  The culture of medicine used to be worse, from what I hear, though.  Stories from older attendings describe times where they were instructed not to leave the ICU for up to 2 days, and the effects of an abusive culture which I've been told not to describe. 

While there isn't a lot of yelling heard anymore, a lot of derogatory comments are made in a normal voice, and they're still really hurtful.  Whenever I see that a busy resident wasn't able to finish a task, they get reprimanded instead of being asked how they can be helped.  It's hard for me to watch attendings get frustrated and impatient with residents and medical students when they're having trouble performing a procedure.   It's not conducive to learning and really stresses out the learner, souring their experience and making it harder to concentrate.    

Learners like students who are paying to be there, often go ignored, or are made to do non-educational things like faxing copies of medical records, or made to feel small by some academic superiors who really think they are superior to everyone else.

I've seen someone have their intelligence insulted in the operating room, and heard of scalpels being thrown in another one.  Working with residents this long really makes me admire their resilience, because the responsibility is terrifying and people are less forgiving for lapses in knowledge, even if it's just listing side effects or drug interactions.

They say part of residency is building a thick skin, but there can really be a culture where the abusiveness and destruction of morale occurs all too often and makes training miserable.  Know the people you can go to for help and to report professionalism issues with.