by Shawn Vuong
Incoming medical students, I know you’re excited about medical school. I was in your same exact position about 2 years ago to the day. Every day I went to sleep and thought about how cool medical school was going to be, how much cool stuff I was going to learn, and how much my life was going to change.
I asked myself many questions. Am I going …
New medical student summer tips
by Michael Smith
Life is better but the quality of surgical training has gone down in the wake of a Swiss law restricting surgical residents’ hours.
That was the view of both the residents and the surgical consultants who supervise them in a survey conducted by Daniel Oertli, MD, of University Hospital Basel in Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues.
Less than 9% of residents and less than 5% of surgical consultants saw the change …
Does restricting work hours hurt surgical training?
At a recent meeting I attended, a vigorous discussion broke out about what medical students, residents and attendings should wear, and more importantly what they should not wear.
Interestingly, patients have been asked to weigh in on this discussion. What to wear is also on the mind of many current second year medical students who may find themselves trying to take study breaks from USMLE 1 to go buy …
What residents and medical students should wear in the hospital
by Kristina Fiore
Deaths from medication mistakes appear to spike in July, when medical residencies begin, researchers say.
Over nearly a 30-year period, fatal medication errors appear to jump 10% solely in that summer month in U.S. counties with teaching hospitals, David P. Phillips, PhD, of the University of California San Diego and Gwendolyn E.C. Barker, BA, of the University of California Los Angeles, reported online in the Journal of General Internal …
Medication errors spike when new residents start in July
by Emily P. Walker
A majority of the American public doesn’t approve of doctors working 24 hours straight and supports tougher work hour regulation for resident physicians, according to a new public opinion survey.
The survey, published in the online journal BMC Medicine, is the first to assess the public’s perceptions about the controversial issue of medical residents’ work hours.
The survey found that 90% of Americans believe the maximum shift duration should …
The public wants resident physicians to work less
A version of this op-ed was published on June 2nd, 2010 in USA Today.
During medical training, I routinely stayed awake for more than 30 hours straight to care for my patients in the hospital. I strove to be the tireless physician who would be with his patients until they went home. It turns out I may have jeopardized their safety instead.
For many years, the medical field has been rightfully …
Op-ed: Restrictions on physician hours may not improve patient safety
On a recent Saturday, I rounded in the hospital. I met up with Zainab, the president of the minority premed association for the University of Chicago, who asked to shadow me. While she was doing research at the hospital, she had not ever rounded in the hospital before. It was Saturday so our team was mostly off so it was just me and my very capable resident who is about …
Tips for students who want to shadow doctors
A guest column by the American Board of Internal Medicine, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is sending a clear message to doctors this week: Compromise the integrity of the certification process and face swift and serious penalties.
ABIM is sanctioning 139 physicians for sharing, buying, or soliciting confidential, copyrighted questions that were part of the exam …
ABIM responds to doctors sharing board certification questions
I received a wonderful inquisitive e-mail from a 1st year medical student. He aspires to an academic internal medicine career and, as a non-traditional student with an MPH, has realistic goals. He asks:
What scares me is the prospect of going into a relatively low-paying specialty in such a non-lucrative practice environment with such massive educational debt. Are there any other challenges to going into internal medicine that are unique to …
Academic internal medicine as a physician career choice
by an anonymous medical student
As of today, I am one month from adding those long sought-after and hard-earned initials to my name, M.D. I matched at my number one choice in a very competitive “lifestyle specialty,” have a fabulous husband who has helped me through the emotional turmoil that is medical school, and two young boys who make me laugh and smile every day. I sit here, where …
A medical student chooses dermatology because of family
I try to read as much as I can of everything floating around the medical blogosphere. I think the most recurrent topic I come across is why current medical students aren’t choosing to go into primary care.
It’s a great topic that relates to health care reform, making it ripe for medical bloggers to comment on relentlessly. Probably the most often cited reason is low reimbursement for primary care (read: primary …
Why primary care doesn’t appeal to this medical student
I went to medical school and know something about what it’s like to work in clinical environments.
I’ve recently started reading blogs and articles about “physician burnout” and I can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of blame being placed on “the system”. Doesn’t this kind of storytelling just reinforce that physicians are victims? I’d like to see physicians adopt a way of thinking that will enable them to create …
Burnout is common to teaching violin and practicing medicine
An audiobook except from Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation, now available for download on iTunes.
Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation — Click to play audioclip
by Sandeep Jauhar, MD
Chapter one
I had been an intern less than an hour, and already I was running late. The sloping footpath leading up to the hospital was paved with gray cobblestones. My feet ached as my oversize leather …
Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation, an audiobook excerpt
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A letter from a pre-medical student honoring her gross anatomy cadaver.
Letter to the other side
by Hana Low
Thank you for donating your body to science and medical education. It’s so generous to give yourself to those you will never meet. I hope you’re having a good time, up there or wherever you are.
Working with your body has made me acutely conscious of the dangers in my everyday environment. I have to …
A pre-medical student writes to her gross anatomy cadaver
My husband and I recently traveled to Wuhan Medical School in the Hubei Province in central China.
Our medical school has partnered with Wuhan to help inform their curricular reform efforts. We spent 4 days touring the hospitals and teaching facilities, meeting students and faculty, going on rounds, and giving talks. Although the language barrier was challenging, we had incredible translators who worked to translate every slide we spoke …
China medical school and residency training
by Dr. Whoo, MD
I have met several women who have completed residency and maybe even practiced beyond that, but decide to quit and stay at home with kids. I wonder – why would a woman who has gone through all of that training just quit? It would seem like the hard part is behind them and I am perplexed by their decision but, of course, I …
Family comes first for some who have finished residency
In the early 90s, I had the privilege of directing UCSF’s exceptional internal medicine residency program. It was a time of transition. A decade earlier, residency accreditation requirements (dictated by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, ACGME) were fairly benign and largely ignored – marquee programs like ours were generally given carte blanche to organize our residents’ experience as we saw fit.
When I took over our residency in 1992, …
Residency team changes can improve education and patient care
A guest column by the American College of Physicians, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
by Steven Weinberger, MD, FACP
Since the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) instituted its Outcome Project approximately 10 years ago, residency training programs have progressively focused on how well their residents have acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes in six broad domains. These “general competencies” include medical knowledge, patient …
ACP: Challenges for a competency-based framework for residency training
A guest column by the American Board of Internal Medicine, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
The debate about recertification recently in the New England Journal of Medicine and highlighted earlier this week on KevinMD.com and in an Associated Press article brings to light some of the real challenges facing the future of the Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program.
I have been through …
ABIM: Maintenance of Certification – For the public
by Dr. Whoo, MD
Q. I just found out last week that I’ll be a new mom in November, making me an official mother in medicine! I’ve been reading the blog for a while, because I love hearing what all of you have to say about your lives. Here’s my question: What tips would you give for surviving residency while pregnant, especially 30-hour calls (without caffeine)?
— From a future mom and …
Medicine residency survival tips during pregnancy
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