I am an imposter in a white coat. I’m not sure if anyone knows yet, I hope I am good at hiding it. It’s a well-kept secret amongst all medical students. In the hospital, I am at the bottom. I know the least and have the least power. Most patients don’t realize this and look up to me like I’m an all-knowing, wise muse or something of that nature. Sometimes, …
To medical students: We’re all in the same boat
What do you do when your ideal residency program does not exist? This is a truth that all perspective applicants must come to terms with, but I was still hoping that I would be the exception. I had created my list of everything my top family medicine program must have, including strong research mentorship, dedicated faculty, and a welcoming resident environment, and I had an idea going into the interview season what …
Choosing a perfect residency: What goes into a rank list
Should medical school be shortened to three years?
I say, “no.”
Here’s why.
There is way too much to learn in 3 years. Unless medical education is radically changed, it will be impossible for students to memorize all the unnecessary stuff they still have to memorize, complete all their clerkships, and move onto the next phase — residency training.
I do not see how medical students can choose a career path before they have …
Don’t shorten medical school: Shorten undergraduate training instead
Match Day: It’s among the most memorable moments of medical school, a time when students, friends, family and faculty gather to open those coveted white envelopes. It’s the symbolic first step out of medical school and into residency, and a tradition that is beloved by many. Yet the matching process is viewed by those outside of the medical profession (and to some within it) as a very odd way to …
During my internal medicine rotation, the medical students had the opportunity to attend intern morning report, an interactive teaching session where attending physicians walk the interns through a patient’s story, starting from the moment they hit the door of the emergency room to the final stages of diagnosis and treatment.
After discussing the patient’s symptoms, complaints and past medical history, the attendings always ask the group to think carefully about the …
Shotgun medicine: An arrow is often better
During my year as a chief resident, I have the privilege to attend on the general medicine service for 8 weeks. I recently completed 4 weeks and, as expected, found myself in an entirely new realm of patient care and accountability. I would be remiss without recalling a few of the pivotal lessons and poignant moments that stand out.
Transitioning from resident to attending inevitably results in greater scrutiny. Despite my best …
The transition from chief resident to attending
I was a junior medical student, wearing a short white coat, pockets stuffed with reflex hammer and spiral bound Washington Manual of Therapeutics, rubber tourniquet and pens and pads. I was on a rotation out at the Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia. DDEAMC was not too far from my home away from home, the Medical College of …
How to sign your name: A decades-old lesson that still resonates
While interviewing for medical schools last fall, I observed a strange phenomenon: every institution I encountered would underscore its student-run free clinic as a major highlight of the medical education they could offer. First- and second-year students would speak rapturously about the experience they gained from clinic. Working there, they said, reminded them of why they wanted to become doctors in the first place.
Today, the majority of all U.S. medical …
Can student run free clinics help the health care safety net?
In medicine, we pledge: primum non nocere. First, do no harm. But before we can do no harm as doctors, we need to be doctors. And before we can be doctors, we need to be human beings. Being a doctor is a great privilege, but it is a subordinate privilege. Being human comes first.
I distinctly recall the time in my medical education when I realized I was becoming more medical …
Doctors need to remember that they need to be human first
Since the beginning of it all, since that exact moment where I shot up from my friend’s dorm room cot with a revelation to pursue my ancestral calling in medicine, I have been continually questioned by family and friends on exactly where I sit in the totem pole of physicianhood. And I get it. With terms like sub-intern, intern, senior resident and attending, it must be confusing …
What does it mean to be a medical intern?
It’s common knowledge among third year medical students that statistically a lot of us are mentally damaged in some way. Knowing these stats makes us feel better about our ongoing feelings of low self esteem, high anxiety and sometimes outright panic. In the car on the way to rotations, regular starters of conversation are statements like, “Did you know 35% of med students are depressed at any given time?”, to …
When do medical students lose their empathy?
As a resident, probably the most common piece of feedback one receives is, “Read more and expand your clinical knowledge base.” This critique is a standard and generic piece of feedback to encourage the younger generation to never quit in the endless pursuit of knowledge. As our erudite attendings know, medical knowledge always evolves and often reverses course. Thus, the trainee is reminded to establish the habit of keeping up …
What’s the best way to keep up with medical literature?
An excerpt from The Heartbeat of Success: A Med Student’s Guide to Med School Admissions.
What’s all the fuss about extracurricular activities? Isn’t doing well in your coursework and on the MCAT enough to get into medical school? Nope. Extracurricular activities and employment are opportunities to explore your interests, become …
Applying to medical school: The fuss about extracurricular activities
“Well, if medicine doesn’t work out, you can always fall back on waiting tables,” I joked with my waiter, who, like me, happens to be a medical student. We were bonding over completing our first year of medical school — he, in Detroit, and myself, in the Bronx. He liked waiting tables and decided to work during his last summer of …
Medical students may find themselves without a job
There is a saying that you enter medical school wanting to help people but exit it wanting to help yourself. It may be a cynical view, but a realistic one. The criteria for being a good medical student are far different from being a good doctor. Medical education may be breeding a legion of self-serving, grade-grubbing, SOAP-note spewing machines rather than …
Being a good medical student doesn’t mean you’ll be a good doctor
Three years ago, in the midst of all that was happening with health care reform, I thought about if I’d ever recommend medicine to my daughter. I thought and thought about that issue and looked deep inside myself for reasons one might still choose this profession, then penned “The Top Ten Reasons to Be a Doctor.” It is, by far, the most popular post on my blog, having been …
Learn to do other things besides medicine that will engage your brain
I am a fourth year medical student that attends an institution that does not have a department of family medicine.
Currently there are only 10 such allopathic institutions in the country. When I tell colleagues and friends that I intend to enter family medicine they say, “oh primary care?” While yes, it is true that family physicians obviously practice primary care, I am disheartened that my colleagues do not know or …
I am an orphan: A medical school without a family medicine department
An attending once told me, “You can’t please ‘em all.” And it’s true. Sometimes in medicine, you just have to keep your head up and remember the bigger picture of why you are in this field.
A few months ago I did my internal medicine sub-I, which is a rotation medical students take in their fourth year when they are expected to perform on the same level as an intern. I’ve …
You have to develop thick skin in medicine
As a member of the medical school admissions committee, I’ve interviewed many amazing applicants. Here’s what I wish I could say to them:
1. Your interview performance is critical. As interviewers, we’re amazed by the quality of today’s applicants. In fact, many of us wonder if we would get into med school today. “I can’t believe how much she’s done,” is something I hear time and time again from my colleagues. The sad …
The medical school interview: Strategies from an admissions officer
An interesting conversation recently took place among residency program directors in my field of internal medicine.
At issue was the declining pass rate of first-time test takers of the ABIM Certification Exam.
It’s a mouthful to say, but the ABIM exam is the ultimate accolade for internists. One is only eligible to take the exam after having successfully completed a three-year residency training period (the part that includes “internship,” right after medical …
Declining board exam pass rates: Blame millennial doctors?
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