Managing Emotions In Medical School Analysis

In Managing Emotions in Medical School, Smith and Kleinman write about the struggle that medical students have to endure in order to be categorized as professional and apt to be considered for future medical careers. The struggle to obtain “affective neutrality” and “detached concern” is present all throughout the students’ college term. Smith and Kleinman present the various responses from students in their first, second, third and fourth years in medical school and how each of their experiences present uncomfortable and inappropriate situations in which they need to have an explicit impression management, otherwise they may not obtain the desirable responses from their professors and fellow classmates. However rigorous their job is to obtain
On page 4, a first-year female expresses the agony she has to keep to herself while in medical school: “I would be embarrassed to talk about it. You’re supposed to be professional here. Like there’s an unwritten rule about how to talk.” Not only do students have to restraint themselves from expressing the emotions that present through the uses of all their sense in examinations of their fellows, dissections of cadavers, and autopsies of fresh dead people, but they must also conclude that they can no longer adhere a connection of what the dead body or cadaver was once as a living person. Many students conclude that it’s a norm expected to not feel any sort of emotional or physical attachment to their patients, although no one has yet written of such expectations that could consequently make it an official taboo. Another strategy that medical students consciously display is the use of professional language when it comes to describing intimate parts of the human body. Medical students fear that if they don’t show professionalism in their day to day procedures in their classes, professors and faculty will disregard them as “competent” or fit for a job in the medical
A particular TV show in which I observed this type of behavior is Pretty Little Liars. In this show there is this character who changes the way she eats and the way she dresses in order to be considered part of a cliché group of girls. She struggle throughout her early teen years with her former way of eating whatever her taste buds usually attracted her to. Her strategies used in order to achieve a certain weight was to go through days with little to no eating and the absolute rejection of any type of sweets. She was also lectured by the “leader” of the group on what to wear and what not to wear. Moreover, the “leader”, Allison, constantly watched over Hannah and kept her from being tempted to eat junk food or overeating. This type of impression management allowed Hannah to be part of the group, but it also benefited Allison. She was known throughout the school to be a people manipulator and therefore brought her name some sense of power and a kind of “respect”. Hannah was also able to gain admiration from her classmates and the group, and also a personal self-esteem from the way she had been physically