ABSTRACT
There are at least seven groups of people to whom house officers are responsible: their patients, their families, society, institutional personnel, fellow residents, students, and self. These comments will focus on groups related to the institution: faculty, administrators, patients, nurses, other residents and students. The complex, generic issues in graduate medical education – funding, subspecialization, and maldistribution among them – will require intervention at the national level. Residents are, in large part, responsible for the quality of the physicians who come after them. There is an understandable tendency for doctors to be authoritarian in their dealings with patients, but good physicians encourage patient involvement, which entails getting to know them and their circumstances. The faculty and institution provide guidance and a learning environment, but residents must be the primary stewards of their own education. In dealings with peers and students, the rule is teach, teach, teach.
