Recently, a heart-wrenching tragedy occurred in the Hunan Provincial People's Hospital. A 25-year-old trainee, who graduated from the medical school of Hunan Normal University, chose to end his life because he could not bear the huge work pressure. It is reported that this unfortunate incident occurred on the Lantern Festival on February 24, and in the early morning of the same day, the family of the deceased received ** from the hospital and learned the bad news. After the investigation of **, because the bathroom at the scene was locked, the possibility of homicide was ruled out. It is worth noting that there have been similar incidents before, in which a Guizhou trainee committed suicide due to excessive work pressure at the Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University.
On February 29, a suicide note from a suspected deceased person was found. The family released Cao Liping's suicide note, in which they strongly criticized the hospital's training system, arguing that it treats medical students as tools.
The suicide note revealed the tremendous pressure that the deceased had endured before his death: "I really couldn't hold on anymore, even though I had taken a leave of absence, my heart was beating violently, coughing to the point of chest pain, and my chest was so tight that I was afraid to dress, but there was still endless work waiting for me, and I could not get rest." From this suicide note, we can clearly see that in addition to the huge intensity of work, there are also problems such as "working overtime during holidays", "not allowed to take leave when you are sick", "being counted as absent from a small class for transferring patients", "being so busy with work that she has no time to eat, but she is accused of not doing hygiene", which became the last straw that overwhelmed her. In her suicide note, she evaluated herself as an "unqualified cow and horse", revealing her deep helplessness about her own situation.
Some medical students have expressed their opinions on the Internet about this incident, believing that the current training system is too harsh for medical students. In practice, they are seen as doctors, but in terms of pay and status, they are only considered students.
Some medical students said that they chose to leave the medical profession because they did not want to go through the training process. Because in the current system, you can't be a qualified doctor without regular training.
Some shared their personal experiences, noting that medical students face similar dilemmas in general. They have experienced harsher working conditions, such as three-day night shifts and 16 patients on their own during the day. They believe that if they had encountered problems, the deceased could have sought help from other avenues, such as seeking help from science and education or graduate supervisors, or even chose to give up. They regret that the deceased ultimately chose the most extreme way to end their lives, using this way to counter the mistakes of the system.
The public has questioned the rationale for the distribution of work between doctors and trainees. They wonder why salaried doctors can push all the work to regular trainees and use unreasonable rules to demand that they do too much work. They questioned whether the supervising doctors lacked empathy and whether they abused the rules of the trainees, even on holidays.
The student in this incident was only 25 years old, and the flower of her life withered before it could fully bloom, which is extremely sad and regrettable.
In this tragedy, we lost a young female graduate student who was only three months away from graduation but chose to leave on the verge of finishing her studies. This is a time of great sorrow and regret. When allocating medical resources and formulating new regulations, society, the health industry, and official institutions should pay more attention to the psychological capacity of medical students. The medical authorities should also improve the treatment of trainees and quickly improve the relevant rules and regulations to ensure that their legitimate rights and interests are protected.
In recent years, news reports of student suicides have been commonplace, and these tragedies continue to remind us of the preciousness of life. They prompt us to think deeply about the rationality and perfection of the current medical student training system. We must work together to care for the physical and mental health of medical students and reform the training system to create a better learning and working environment.
For those of you who are already clinicians or directors, we urge you to allocate your work appropriately and pay attention to the physical and mental capacity of your trainees. There may be such a trainee next to you, although he is still insisting, but he already has the idea of suicide in his heart. Give them a hug, a word of encouragement, a day off, and a sincere greeting. Such care is as precious as saving a life from the hands of death. The medical industry needs to be passed on from generation to generation, and we cannot let the trainees lose their pursuit of medicine and love for life. We can't make more young students shy away from medicine.
For those medical students who have not yet graduated or are in regular training, if you feel overwhelmed by the heavy academic pressure and unreasonable medical system, please seek help and support, whether it is classmates, teachers, parents or friends. Don't be discouraged if you can't find a solution for the time being. Remember, ending life is not the only way out. Even if you choose to give up your career as a doctor, your future is still full of possibilities, and the road of life is just after you cross the threshold in front of you. Medical students