I’m not sure the exact moment was when I started to lose my empathy.
It’s common knowledge among third year medical students that statistically a lot of us are mentally damaged in some way. Knowing these stats makes us feel better about our ongoing feelings of low self esteem, high anxiety and sometimes outright panic. In the car on the way to rotations, regular starters of conversation are statements like, “Did you know 35% of med students are depressed at any given time?”, to which everyone nods seriously because we’re all thinking exactly the same thing: “Well, at least I’m not the only one.”
