Is medical education and medical training for US doctors too long?

Such a huge moral responsibility should not be placed on them without sufficient training

Question: Is medical education and medical training for US doctors too long?
Position‹2 of 2: No, such a high level of education and training is necessary for top-notch healthcare services.
Argument‹2 of 3›: Such a huge moral responsibility should not be placed on them without sufficient training

Doctors have one of the most demanding responsibilities. They are in charge of the very lives of people and their actions can help or hurt families and societies. People should not be thrown into such demanding situations without appropriate training and education.

The argument

Being a doctor is a huge honor as well as an enormous responsibility. They are solely and primarily in charge of people's well-being and even their lives. In most corporate or retail jobs, if someone were to make a mistake, the worst consequence is that the client does not get what they want. But in medicine, a seemingly simple or honest mistake could end someone's life. In the United State, 215,000 people die each year due to medical errors. In fact, it is the third leading cause of death in the US. If the training or education period was shortened, there is a higher chance of such errors occurring. When it comes to being a doctor, and being responsible for someone's life, there is no room for negotiation regarding how long or how much they need to train. These requirements exist for a reason. They are put in place to help doctors perform their duty to the public as best as possible. Doctors and medical school students would wholeheartedly agree that any training that helps them become better at treating people is essential. Society should honor this commitment as well.

Premises

[P1]Doctors bear an enormous moral responsibility, as a simple mistake can end a life — unlike most jobs where errors merely disappoint a client. [P2] Medical errors already kill 215,000 people a year in the US, the third leading cause of death, and shortening training would raise that risk. [P3] These requirements exist to help doctors serve the public as well as possible, a commitment doctors and students themselves endorse. [C] Therefore, such a huge moral responsibility should not be placed on doctors without sufficient training.

Counter-arguments

Shortening the period of education and training, would not mean that doctors are ill-equipped. It simply means that the system would become more efficient in teaching them how to be good doctors. Most people in the medical field would agree that during the 4 years spent at undergrad, they did not really learn much about what it means to be a doctor. If the time spent at undergrad was shortened, it could help most of them with repaying loans and it would not stop them from becoming well-trained and well-educated doctors.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The stakes of medical error are not in dispute, and the sibling position does not deny them — it holds that the same competence could be reached in less time. Establishing that training must be sufficient does not establish that the current length is what sufficiency requires. [Rejecting P2] The 215,000 figure is presented as settled when it comes from a widely contested extrapolation, and no source is given for it here. More to the point, nothing links it to training length: errors attributed to handover failures, fatigue, staffing levels and prescribing systems would not be reduced by adding years of study. [Rejecting P3] "These requirements exist for a reason" is an appeal to the status quo, and the appeal to what doctors would endorse is an appeal to those already inside the system. The counter-argument's specific claim — that the four undergraduate years teach little about being a doctor — goes unanswered, and other countries reach comparable outcomes with an integrated medical degree begun straight from school, which the argument does not mention.