What causes medical students to commit cold-blooded crimes?
Perhaps that’s a bit strong in the case that The Happy Hospitalist cites, where a Nebraska student was barred from campus after threatening faculty. He writes that schools do “everything within their power to help you graduate once you were accepted. It is in the state’s best interest to graduate a student that they have invested so strongly in.”
It also shows that the rigorous screening process that medical schools have are not foolproof.
I was a medical resident at Boston Medical Center when this case happened in 2001. A Boston University medical student, who was also a 5-year veteran sniper of the Israeli Army, walked into an apartment and executed a man and his dog.
He was arrested either doing rounds or while working on the hospital’s medicine floor.
Scary.
Related posts:
- The Craigslist Killer is a Boston University medical student
- Match Day comes and goes, and did medical students continue to avoid primary care?
- Using art to teach medical students
- Do drug company logos influence medical students?
- Medical students want to become primary care doctors, until reality hits
- Grading medical students, pass-fail or letter grades?
- Dr. Erwin Hirsch
{ 2 comments }
The better and more relevant question is whether antisocial personality disorder is more common among medical students than the population at large.
My take: it is probably less common, but not necessarily perceived as so. First, as a disorder, it likely would interfere with the screening process on application to medical school, which, despite its critics, is still fairly rigorous and thorough. Second, the clinical environment and direct observation by trained professionals and fellow students would be more, not less likely to identify pathological behavior. I know that was true in my large medical school class.
There is no reliable way to screen sociopaths out of any profession and therefore they are found in all. What is shameful is when their behavior becomes known but those in authority don’t have the guts to get them out professions where they have power requiring trust–such as law, medicine, clergy, and psychology.
But most who kill and certainly most who threaten are not sociopaths. Most people who threaten are rather just narcissistic bullies and back off when appropriately firm measures are taken, some unfortunately are paranoid and escalate.
But humans are natural killers, it no psychopathology. As long as medical students (insert any other categorization of humans) are human, some will kill.
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