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.
During a day of shadowing during my first year of medical school, the physician I was following had been running behind schedule and instructed me to keep the final patient company until he caught up.
I knocked on the door and found myself facing a wide-eyed, middle-aged man staring down apprehensively at his severely bloated stomach.
As I asked the patient what was going on, he suddenly looked up at me and …
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This patient interaction is a reminder of the power of being human
I’ve often been struck by a painting of Maimonides in my medical school. The artwork features him holding pages of a book that say, “Teach thy tongue to say I do not know and thou shalt progress.”
That quote resonates with me more each day. As a first-year MD student, I’ve uttered the words “I don’t know” much more than ever. I’ve discovered that, whether I’m naming nerves found in the …
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A medical student recognizes the power of the phrase, “I don’t know”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
It’s a question I frequently hear from physicians on my clinical rotations. Phrased somewhat tongue-in-cheek, the wording allows me to answer either in jest or in earnest.
“An astronaut,” I sometimes say, hoping for laughs and no follow-up. Other times, I try out different responses like Halloween costumes: a critical care specialist, an emergency physician, a surgeon. If I want the questioner’s …
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Medical school ends with a leap of faith
“I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names; he says they are natural and not conventional; […] that there is a truth or correctness in them.”
– Plato
I once heard that the sound of one’s name is the most beautiful thing in the universe, which is probably an overstatement. But one’s name is one of the first words one hears from birth, as parents …
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My name is not “Med Student”
I had been diagnosed three days prior, given lithium to stabilize and a benzodiazepine to sleep. I went home. Things did not get better.
I had been admitted just that morning after a long, confusing night in the ED. I did not yet understand the severity of what had happened — or even what had happened. The mania was still mostly euphoric and speckled with bursts of joy, but between these …
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Give your psychiatric patients a reason to trust
The first time a woman went into the final stage of labor, I watched from a corner of the room. As a third-year medical student, I was on my six-week clinical rotation in obstetrics and gynecology, and it was day one of the two-week portion on the labor and delivery floor. As a loudspeaker announcement projected over the woman’s screams, and nurses and doctors rushed in response, I instinctively clasped …
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The excitement of clinical rotations: Not just learning medicine but doing medicine
I’m writing this for my tribe of worriers and self-doubters, people for whom ever-present test stress is inextricable to the med school experience. Sure, every medical student becomes preoccupied fretting over exams to some degree. That’s part of what you sign up for. But our preoccupation is something greater than that—it towers over us and bullies us. It makes us cower in the corner, begging to be spared from harm.
We’re …
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For students with test stress, medical schools leave a void
I graduated from an international medical school this past spring. I’m currently in the midst of a preliminary year as an internal medicine resident at St. John’s Riverside Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y. Next year, I’ll start my dream residency in anesthesiology at Brown University.
Like many physicians, my journey to medicine has had its share of twists and turns. But my story is slightly different than the …
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What I learned from starting medical school in January
There’s a pivotal scene in the 2007 Pixar movie Ratatouille, in which the restaurant critic Anton Ego takes a first bite of the movie’s titular food. He is then whisked back to a moment in his childhood, during which his mom provides love and comfort through a helping of her homemade ratatouille. This scene is a homage to Marcel Proust’s seminal “Madeleine Episode,” as described In Search of Lost Time, published almost …
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The scents in the hospital are from diseases you’ll never forget
I heard about you a few times before I ever met you in person. It was my first day on the palliative care service — a week that felt like a relaxing break from the sixteen-hour days I was used to on surgery. Many people don’t know what palliative care is. But I suspect these days if you are still living that you know it well.
I first heard of you …
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A letter to a cancer patient in palliative care
“What challenges do you see yourself facing as a doctor?”
I’m sitting in a suit, facing a young Asian woman with black, round glasses across a desk. On the desk in front of her is an iPad, and she sits cross-legged, hands resting on her legs. I’m in my interview for medical school, and the woman across me, who introduced herself as Angela, is awaiting my response.
I pause and mentally check …
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What challenges do you see yourself facing as a doctor?
Despite growing older, the contents of my phone calls back home have remained the same. However, the contents of my life have not.
Conversations with my parents consist of what I plan to cook that week or how I’m feeling about my workload, but rarely do I share the details of my research project or my struggle to conceptualize the nephron. This is not because I don’t want to share these …
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Finding a mentor to replace a medical student’s parental support
OK, quick — word association time.
I say “doctor,” and you think what? “Smart,” right?
And it’s true. Doctors are smart. But before you buy into the myth that every doctor has breezed through school and could fall out of bed with a #2 pencil and crush an exam without thinking about it, consider that over 1,100 internal medicine doctors fail their board exam every year.
And that’s just one medical specialty. When …
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3 reasons why smart doctors fail big exams
Recently, at medical schools across the country, first-year students officially donned the physician’s traditional white coat for the first time.
The white coat ceremony is a powerful symbolic moment. It signifies that the students are moving beyond their identity as ordinary citizens and into their new identity as healers. The ceremony celebrates their idealism and their commitment to a life of caring for others. And, although they may not realize this, …
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Can humanism save medicine?
Think studying abroad doesn’t fit with your future plans? Think again.
Since the day I applied to university, I had been researching how I could incorporate global learning into my undergraduate degree program, while also thinking about my future goals for getting into medical school. When I was accepted to do a Bachelor of Science with a double major in chemistry and biology, I surprisingly still found time for extracurricular activities …
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How studying abroad helped get me into medicine
“First Aid For The USMLE Step 1 — cost: $45, format: reference book.”
“Pathoma — cost: $99 (1-year subscription), format: video explanations + reference book.”
“SketchyMedical — cost: $150 (1-year subscription), format: cartoon video memory device.”
Our naïve MS2 eyes were glued to the screen as our noble MS3 predecessors clicked through the slideshow, pausing to talk about which third-party study resources were “super high yield” and which were only “moderately high yield” …
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Cookie-cutter medical students need decorating
What is your gut reaction when you hear the words “hospital chaplain?” Maybe it’s an eye roll or confused stare about what you believe to be an incoming attempt at religious conversion. As a family member anxious about a loved one in the hospital, maybe it’s a sigh of relief. As a patient, maybe it’s an overwhelming fear of incoming bad news. Health care chaplaincy is chronically misunderstood, beginning with …
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It’s time to stop being skeptical of hospital chaplains
I have just finished another round of that dreaded process that we call “the interview process.” Without fail, this process has haunted me almost cyclically every 3 to 4 years in the last 11 years of my life. First, there were medical school interviews, residency program interviews, and then lastly, fellowship interviews.
You would think that after so many rounds of applying, it would get easier. You would think after I …
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4 essential tips for residency interviews
