Observing The Unforeseen Divisiveness Of COVID-19 In Medical School
Mentor: Rashmi Ganith, MD, The Ohio State University Medical Center
Whether it be the anti-vaccine movement, or the sudden surge in air fryer purchases, COVID-19 has triggered a strange reactive phenomenon that has knocked the social and political dynamics of the United States out of equilibrium. Medical school culture and education is certainly not immune to these changes. Medical students are at the forefront of these shifts at highly progressive universities, and by extension, are drawn into the discourse of the pandemic.
When I first entered medical school, it was almost like walking the halls of high school again. Our classes were significantly smaller than the thousands I went to college with. The proximity brewed strong relationships, but it also contributed to a degree of volatility, which was compounded by the high stress of medical school. It was almost as if we were waiting for a catalyst to set off a wild, unpredictable reaction. This catalyst ended up being the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic started towards the middle of my second year, and there were very interesting polarizations within our medical school class. There were, expectedly, many people on the cautious side who wore masks, were pro-vaccine, and limited their person-person encounters. Then, there were a minority of skeptics, whose doubt existed on a spectrum, anywhere from disliking masks to completely denying that COVID-19 existed. The decision to wear masks became political and created emotional divisions amongst friends. People began taking sides and taking shots at each other. Classmates with differing opinions became so-called enemies, and even resorted to criticizing each other on social media and reporting each other.
Looking back as third-year medical students now too busy to care about what my peers are doing, I view these events in a more objective way. This medical school dynamic can be seen as a microcosmic parallel to the outside world, where all the same drama exists, but on a larger scale. Because of this, I believe small scale squabbling like this prepares us for defending “the why” behind our medical decisions in our future practice. Medical care is not blindly accepted and is now questioned more than ever in the COVID era. Aspects of medicine with years of research and discourse behind it, such as vaccination and drug-approvals, are being flatly rejected. If we do not know how to engage with bright-minded peers in our microcosm about these topics, it seems unreasonable to expect smooth sailing when we are presented with the same arguments in today’s crazy outside world.
While I do not enjoy witnessing my classmates report each other and participate in posting wars on social media, I think there is beauty in the burning fire. Much like how wildfires recycle the nutrients of a forest, I think a layer of superficiality of our medical school had to be burned through the COVID-craze to allow us to rise to greater analytical challenges beyond textbooks and typical interactions with colleagues. The pandemic experience pushed our sheltered pre-clinical minds to a greater level, which can only improve the care we deliver as future clinicians.
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