<p>I apologize as I haven’t read thru whole thread if this has all been discussed or refuted already. </p>
<p>Having interns around is more work for the employer. The time that it takes to explain how to do a task, show how to do it, check to make sure that is done, and throw in a bit of teaching or “what’s going through my mind” or wisdom all takes time away from the person working with the intern. And all this extra time does not accrue to increased future productivity since the intern will usually leave in 3 months or so. It’s like an apprenticeship, and it’s the way that skills have been taught from trades to medicine. If a company were to pay for this service, it would be easier to hire a per diem employee, part time employee, rather than investing time and energy training someone who leaves in 3 months.</p>
<p>And yes, if the intern is filing, making coffee or whatever, they are still seeing the inside of a business and have access to people on the inside who they can either watch, pick their brains, or just experience. </p>
<p>In medicine, we train med students, residents, fellows. It’s more work for us. In exchange, they make our lives easier by doing grunt work and paperwork and seeing patients in the middle of the night. But if you add up the time savings vs the time spent, it FAR falls on more time spent by the teaching physician than time saved.</p>