It’s no secret that by the time medical students begin residency, many are jaded. It’s also no secret that at the beginning—at least on paper—medical students are good, caring people.

The logical question: what’s behind the change? Is it the never-ending soul-crushing time-wasting torture of basic science education followed by the thankless continued-debt-incurring grind of clinical rotations? Or, or, is it because our medical school ethics classes haven’t done a good enough job teaching us that—contrary to industry wisdom—patients are human beings?

Choice one, obviously.

So, I’ve had a revelation. When medical students are forced to watch Wit (an otherwise good movie so melodramatic that it pretends that the true love of physicians is biochemistry and thinks that repeating 17th century poetry ad nauseum is emotive), don’t tell us to “consider” the issues of death and dying or the patient experience. It’s patronizing. We consider it. Doing that right is probably the single scariest thing about becoming a doctor. Ethics matters. However, implying that first and second-years actively look forward to psychologically abusing their patients is not an effective way of emphasizing the importance of the doctor-patient relationship.

If a factory wants to stop churning out callous robots, then fix the machinery. It’s not time for an amateur film studies class; we’re not in college anymore, and the moments for classroom revelations have long since past.