Medical education: the discontinuers' view point.

A postal questionnaire was distributed to all students who had discontinued, for any reason, their studies at Aberdeen Medical School. Opinions were sought about their experiences while there, as well as their reactions to the discontinuation therefrom. Claiming that learning to cope with stress was an essential aspect of their professional development, these students were dissatisfied with the extent to which the staff responded to students in need and took their problems not to professional welfare agencies but mainly to family and friends. Almost unanimously they supported the notion of a Student Counselling Service. Problems of adaptation and content of studies were the two items regarded as having made the greatest contribution to their discontinuation. For some of these students and their families, discontinuation had been a distressing experience, but all but one student agreed that they had gained something from their period at medical school, however brief. The medical school can learn much from those who pass out prematurely and not only from those successful on the final day.