Background: This article responds to repeated calls in the literature to teach medical students how to treat the whole patient, not just the disease. It focuses on the educational experiences of medical students in a Canadian university in an effort to clarify the determinants of "caring" in medical education.
Method: Nineteen (19) second-year medical students volunteered to keep weekly journal entries during the first five months of their medical apprenticeship. In journal entry analyses, the authors identified themes through a consensus-building coding process detailed in the work of Maykut and Morehouse (1994) and Huckin (2004). For this article, the authors focus on those themes most closely related to the students' caring experiences during their apprenticeship.
Results: The data highlight components of the medical system which made it difficult for students to engage in caring practices during their apprenticeship: the competing discourses of empathy and efficiency, the objectification of patients, the power of the medical hierarchy, and the institutionalized practice of wounding.
Conclusion: The authors argue that returning medical care and students' experience to a balance of attention to curing and caring is a complex undertaking requiring a re-conceptualization of the process and goals of medical care.