Some med students who haven't ever worked have a very hard time adapting to the clinical years and residency. They still have the mindset that you only "learn" in lecture and that things are important only insofar as needing it for a test. The notion of being subjectively "evaluated" based on things like attitude and being a team player are foreign to them. In a way it's unfair -- we pick the people who are best and brightest under one system, and two years into med school, tell them the game has changed and your grades simply aren't that important anymore, it was all background, now it's about making more senior people like and value you.
This was the most helpful reason to have had a prior career -- some of us are already very facile working in a world with bosses, hierarchy and concepts like face time and office politics.
Years ago when I started friends who backed my transition sent me many articles where employers in medicine stated that they actually preferred hiring nontrad career changers because they had much more realistic expectations once they reached employment and tended to be more "let's just roll up our sleeves and get it done" kinds of people. (And these articles slammed the younger generation - and this was even before the current generation was termed "millennials"). 60 minutes did a piece on the unrealistic work expectations of that new generation as well (although not specific to medicine).
Work is hard, you often will have bosses judging you and you aren't ever paid what you are worth in an employment setting, and how you respond to those basic premises will impact how you behave and fare in the work setting. And it is a learned response, so almost unfair to have your first taste of it in the pressure cooker known as residency.
