That’s what this op-ed suggests, and echoed by Robert Centor:
You might say, how about being admitted to a teaching hospital but staying away from the residents and the students? They’re young and inexperienced, and they sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes they even look stupid. Surely they can’t be good for me?Well, maybe. But I don’t mind students and residents taking care of me, and apart from altruism there are good reasons.
The more people you have thinking about your case, the more eyes on the chart and hands poking at your belly, the less likely it is that something will be missed.
This is why you get asked the same set of questions by the nurse, the student, the resident and the attending: it’s a life or death issue. We all talk to each other and compare notes. We try to maximize the accuracy of information. And people change their stories over time: they remember things, and refine their impressions of past events. They even stop or start lying.
