ABSTRACT
The Harvard Medical Unit exists at the hospital because its interns do the work that must be done to provide patient care. This chapter describes what interns learn to do to be successful interns. Interns learn that to provide patient care and accomplish some of their own purposes as well, they must make deals to obtain the cooperation of the people with whom they must work. The deals that interns must make are actually social exchanges. The relationship between interns and medical students during succession is one of social exchange. The social structure of the services of the Harvard Medical Unit grows out of exchanges between interns and the people with whom they have to work: other interns and residents, physicians, nurses, and ancillary hospital personnel. The organization that is the Harvard Medical Services consists of relationships negotiated and established on the basis of social exchange.
