Are Medical Students Very Supportive Of Each Other Throughout Med School?

This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Florlin Yrad, studies Medicine at Silliman University (2020)



On our first day in medical school, one faculty member told us to look at the people around us, because these are the people will be part of our lives for the next few years. We were encouraged to help each other and to support one another. Our seniors also advised us the same thing. We are encouraged to share notes and resources with one another and help the classmates that are lagging behind, because medicine is not only a profession—it is also a community.

Yes, medical students are inherently competitive for some reason, but we still make it a point to help each other, because our goal as a batch is to graduate and become doctors together.

Medical school can be a very toxic environment, so it is important to support each other. Only a medical student could understand what another medical student is going through. Sometimes family members don’t really understand the pressure and the hardships of daily life as a medical student, so it is very important to have a support system while you’re in medical school.

My friends and I support each other. We study together and learn together. We do get a bit competitive sometimes, but it never gets in the way of our friendship. In life, it’s fun to have a bit of healthy competition every now and then. We would do group studies and ask each other questions. We also share study tips and tricks. For example, I learned a technique called spaced repetition from a medical learning platform I am using called Lecturio and I teach that to my friends; they would also teach me about this useful mnemonic or a study tip they do in order to retain more information and improve recall. The key is to help each other and not be blinded by the competitive atmosphere in medical school.

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