> Years in, how much do you think school long ago vs on-the-job experience informs behavior?

It's not medical school that makes the difference, it's residency, which is > 10,000 hours of on-the-job experience, more or less in an apprenticeship model.

Sure, a nurse can accumulate 10,000 hours of on-the-job experience experience as well, but it doesn't translate when that experience is doing a completely different set of tasks.

Working right next to each other doesn't change things. If a concert violinist and a concert pianist play in the same orchestra for 30 years, does that raise the concert pianist's violin ability to professional level?

I work with nurses every day. They ask questions about treatment plans that, if a resident with more than 3 months experience were to ask me the same question, I would have serious concerns. It's not because the nurses are stupid; it's because they don't have > 10,000 hours formulating treatment plans and (critically) being held accountable for those plans, as a residency graduate does. They see the recipes, but they don't understand how the ingredients are put together.

The fact that it is apprenticeship more than school I feel bolsters my point.

Do the doctor(s) like go to a different room when they come up with the treatment plans? My lay understanding is everyone is around each other a large portion of the time, at least at the hospital (outpatient maybe is more different?).

Perhaps some nurses are happy to not care about "where the recipes come from" and "just mix ingredients, follow the plan", but surely others are just a bit more naturally curious how those come from.

I am not saying they can just instantly become MDs, but If I spent 10,000 being a line cook, I think I would be pretty well prepared to go to culinary school.