Don't be a crab!

 There's a famous story - probably apocryphal - that goes something like this.  A young girl was walking along the beach and came upon a fisherman who was casting his line at the end of the pier.  As she came closer, she noticed that the fisherman had left his bait bucket uncovered.  When she looked inside, the bucket was full of live crabs.

The little girl asked, "Mister, why don't you cover your bucket so the crabs don't get away?" 

 
The fisherman responded that he didn't need to cover the bucket.  "The crabs won't get out.  You see, if there was only one crab in the bucket, it would use its claws to grab the edge of the bucket and crawl out.  But with all of these crabs in the same bucket, anytime one crab tries to grab the edge of the bucket and escape, the others pull it back down.  They will all share the same fate."

I don't know if that's what crabs really do - but it's a great story.  The crabs could work together, and they would probably all get away.  They could even work alone, and they would still escape if they would just leave each other alone.  How often do we see examples of this so-called "crab mentality" in the real world?

Pre-medical students are known to be fairly cutthroat.  That was certainly my experience.  Getting accepted to medical school was extremely competitive.  More than half of the individuals that apply for medical school every year don't get in.  In other words, several students are competing directly for a single spot in medical school.  It's definitely a "crab mentality" - student A has a better chance of getting accepted if student B gets lower grades.  Or at least that's the way most pre-medical students understand how the system works.  

It's probably time to re-evaluate the entire medical school application process.  Once a physician graduates from medical school and completes residency training, he or she will learn very quickly that excellent clinical care is performed by teams, not individuals.  In other words, there is no place for the crab mentality in the hospital or clinic setting!  If that's the case, wouldn't we be better off if medical schools prioritized pre-medical applicants who worked well in teams? 

We can achieve so much more together than we can achieve on our own.  It's probably time that medical schools changed their approach.  Work as a team - don't be a crab!