Medical Education

Students, residents, and educators writing on KevinMD about how physicians are made: medical school, the match, residency, duty hours, supervision, assessment, mistreatment, and the path from student to practicing physician. Many contributors write while still in training, and many write anonymously. For a maintained record of what students and physicians have said about medical school since 2004, see Medical school: what students and physicians say, in their own words. For what residents and attendings have said about residency itself, see Residency: what residents and attendings say, in their own words.

How grit in the face of hopelessness brings out the best of the medical profession

Claire Brown

Medical Education

May 27, 2020

The only drawback to reading The Plague by Albert Camus for the first time while experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic is that I will never get the experience of reading it from a less personal perspective. As the plague in the novel begins to unfold slowly through rat deaths and lockdowns, I recognized my own incredulity in the townspeople as they struggle to accept their new normal. Camus names their reluctance …

Starting medical school in the midst of COVID-19

Horacio Romero Castillo

Medical Education

May 27, 2020

When I made the choice to pursue a medical school education three years ago, I never imagined preparing to matriculate during a pandemic. After accepting a position at the Icahn School of Medicine in March, processing what came next became muddled in between figuring out how to transition to living and working out of a small one-bedroom apartment in New York City due to COVID-19. Can my partner and I …

Tragic optimism in the time of COVID-19

Alexa Mason

Medical Education

May 22, 2020

Whispers of fluctuating rumors had filled our ears for the last week; group messages were exploding with controversy — the invisible threat, COVID-19, had reached the Texas Medical Center. All meetings for over 25 people were canceled, effective immediately. Suddenly, during the season when as a third-year medical student, I was supposed to be rotating through clinical electives, learning how to become the pediatrician I always dreamed of being, all …

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Tragic optimism in the time of COVID-19

Will the pandemic derail medical students’ career paths?

Allison Linehan

Medical Education

May 20, 2020

As I sit here and stare at my computer screen for the 11th hour today, my attention has drifted from my hypothetical study material to reality.

Over the past two months, I’ve spent hours on WebEx lectures as opposed to learning from patients, hours on video lessons instead of casual chats with residents and attendings on the wards, hours on virtual cases instead of seeing, diagnosing, and treating patients myself, hours …

How are the residents doing during the pandemic?

Maggie Connolly, MD

Medical Education

May 19, 2020

When the director of my general surgery program asked for a report on how the pandemic was affecting the residents, I queried my colleagues, promising anonymity to encourage candor. I received a wide variety of responses and reactions. Some are thriving; others are not.

Overall, everyone understands that this is a historic crisis that we will recount at the end of our careers. All are grateful to face the challenge at …

Medical education in the COVID-19 pandemic can’t be ignored

Casey Hribar and Carolyn S. Quinsey, MD

Medical Education

May 19, 2020

Within the current COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers and educators have quickly needed to make adaptations and sacrifices. In order to make room for the conservation of necessary aspects of care, we need to take a conscientious look at our resources. As such, two missions have been embraced nationally by health care systems and university hospitals: conserve personal protective equipment (PPE), and reduce viral exposures to staff and students. Medical …

The mental health benefits of sharing stories

Vibhu Krishna

Medical Education

May 18, 2020

“But, surely offer you therapy or mental health services?” I asked an internal medicine resident and friend on the frontlines in New York City.

“No, not really. Well, there’s one person for our whole group,” they responded.

“And do people feel comfortable going to that person?” I prodded.

“Honestly, even if we had time, it could be seen as weak. Like, you don’t want to be that person that needed it. And we …

The medical education question that needs to be changed

Bo Cheng, DO, PharmD

Medical Education

May 18, 2020

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

That is a common question you hear in the setting of medical education. I think I heard it for the first time on my first clinical rotation. A little background, I was a non-traditional medical student. I worked as a clinical pharmacist for ten years prior to starting medical school. When the resident asked me that question, I was initially a …

The crisis of rotation availability during a pandemic: a medical student’s ethical conundrum

Amit M. Khan, Javaid Afghani, Taner B. Celebi, and Zachary Scheid

Medical Education

May 17, 2020

With COVID-19 still consistently creating setbacks in the health care community, we see yet another issue for medical students because of this pandemic. In prior years, the traditional medical student would be expected to be part of a team assisting medical professionals in the field, developing relationships with future mentors, and gaining the experience necessary to take on the difficulties presented in that given field. COVID-19 has been altering the …

To the AAMC: Recommend an interview limit or else this year’s residency match may be a disaster

Jordan Hughes, MD

Medical Education

May 16, 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has turned medical education upside-down. There has been massive disruption from exclusively virtual pre-clerkship courses to delayed clerkships to canceled graduation proceedings. After weeks of speculation, we’ve learned how the pandemic will disrupt the 2020-2021 residency application cycle. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) now recommends that all residency interviews be conducted virtually. While this is a wise recommendation, out of concern for public safety, I …

When learning medicine is not enough

Hanna Saltzman

Medical Education

May 14, 2020

“Hey, doc,” our new patient grinned at me without teeth. He wears his teeth to eat peanuts, he explained, but today was hankering for a ham sandwich, so left the teeth at home. Here in the clinic straight from the logging job that he had worked for the past fifty years, he wore steel-toed boots, hands covered in dirt. Clarifying that I was a medical student, I asked …

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When learning medicine is not enough

An oath I cannot keep

Anonymous

Medical Education

May 12, 2020

This week I will be taking the physician’s oath.

I am a person who only makes promises I can keep. Thus, I am struggling with committing myself to certain parts of the oath.

Reflecting over the last four years of medical school, I can say with certainty that I hated my medical school experience. I left my family/friends and the diverse, immigrant-cultured society that I’ve known my whole life for the homogeneous, …

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An oath I cannot keep

Deploring racism isn’t enough: Addressing white privilege in medical school

Jessica Cranston

Medical Education

May 10, 2020

If you ask a group of medical students to raise their hands if they are, in fact, racist, I’d venture to guess that not a single hand would shoot up. And I don’t think they would be lying. I am sure that no student believes that he, she, or they are a bigot.

Many of us have committed our lives to care for patients regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. …

Responding to medical students’ concerns and anxieties during these unprecedented times

Kali Chiriboga

Medical Education

May 9, 2020

Everyone is in the same situation across the country in these unprecedented times.

What a statement. A statement that every medical student has undoubtedly heard in utter multitude during these times of virtual medical curricula in place of clinical curricula — of canceled steps, levels, CKs, PE, and CS. It has no doubt been challenging on everyone, with some feeling stripped of their opportunity to help and serve their mentors and …

It’s so important to just take another moment with your patients

Alec Kellish

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

Medical schools around the country remain closed due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, swapping hands-on learning experience on wards and within the operating room for Zoom lectures and telehealth visits. Ten months ago, this was the furthest thing I imagined as I began my third year of medical school, filled with nervous excitement to move on from the relentless studying required for Step 1 and start seeing patients. …

Post-COVID medical education must teach the real reasons for health disparities

Irène P. Mathieu, MD

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

Jason Hargrove, a 50-year-old Detroit bus driver, died from COVID-19 after being turned away from care multiple times while visibly cyanotic. Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in Brooklyn, was sent home several times until she was ill enough from the disease to require intubation and ventilation. She has since died. While there are many reasons for these and other racialized …

How a sojourn atop a mountain in Vietnam changed my life forever

Jay Wong

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

As the gentle rumbles of thunder became increasingly sonorous, the sharp crackles of lightning casting out the darkness of night, striking like the angry whips from a scorned martinet, and the torrential rain now cascading down from our awning like loose waterfalls, making heavy splashes around us every few seconds, I could taste the intoxicating smell of petrichor laced with pot in the air. All the while, we …

I graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot

Gregory Stimac

Medical Education

May 8, 2020

My phone chimed. I received an email stating that rotations were canceled, so I had effectively graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot of my local grocery store. It felt like a natural end to an isolating day. That morning, the cherry blossoms were in full bloom. The streetlights shone against the budding trees and reflected an orange luminosity that refracted against the dewdrops condensed from …

A reflection on a man’s life before dissection

Mami K. Sow

Medical Education

May 7, 2020

Almost immediately, the heat from all of us “freshly minted M1s” dissipated, as did the smiles and excitement on everyone’s faces. The frigid temperature, mimicked the morbidity and mortality interlaced in the air. 38 metal containers. Each carrying the life of an individual who had passed on. Was I feeling dizzy because of the smell of formaldehyde or because of the overwhelming unease? Nothing could have prepared me for this.

The …

How this medical student is inspired by pediatrics

Manar Mohammad, MD

Medical Education

May 6, 2020

I slip through the slightly cracked door.

“Knock, knock,” I say, but mom is hidden under the blankets, resting while there are so many of us to take over for her for a tiny bit. In the darkness, I make my way to the crib, where a crack of sunlight peers through from the slightly opened blinds and shines onto the little one. She’s breathing, with some difficulty, but breathing. Oxygen …

Medical Education

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