There’s absolutely no good reason why Sally should have been in the hospital. Not a day over 60, she had come to the emergency department for severe gastrointestinal pain and was then moved to a bed on the 10th floor of one of the hospital’s two towers.
I met Sally (not her real name) during my first year …
The new generation of physicians will reconcile the patient-provider relationship
I was deeply disappointed to receive the email this week in which I was told that the decision to publish an article I wrote was an error. The editor of the journal, which is PubMed-indexed and respected on an international level, explained that the decision I received was intended for another author. In the days following this news, I have only been able to think about the loss of the …
A medical student recognizes burnout early. He’s doing something about it.
As the millennial presence in health care becomes more prominent, the climate of the health care system will inevitably change. Speaking from a personal perspective, there is a growing emphasis on lifestyle in the conversation of career choice. Medicine is becoming less and less of a life, and more of a part of life, a part of the work-life balance. We (millennials) also place emphasis on impact. We want to …
Here’s how to help create the future of medicine
With Match Day come and gone, and I cannot help but find myself reflecting upon the journey. The inaugural day of medical school orientation was nearly four years ago now, and it would be entirely cliché to say it feels like it was just yesterday. Rather, the truth is that it honestly feels like a lifetime ago. And yet I still remember the finest details of that day, down to …
We are the future of medicine and we are the lucky ones
The scene at the resident teaching session was all too familiar: Awkward silence with either blank stares or brows furrowed in deep valleys of confusion. As I scanned the room, I recognized the moment many lecturers experience: I had completely lost my audience. And, whatever I had planned for the next 10 minutes, would now be spent “taking a step back.” We weren’t talking about a crazy exam finding or …
It’s time to teach residents money management skills
Just after I started at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, I wrote an article on why I’m doing an MD/MBA. I argued that business school can help clinicians develop a new perspective, acquire important skills and build bridges between doctors, policymakers, and administrators.
I heard from dozens of students, faculty, and physicians who supported the idea of an MD/MBA. However, a question repeatedly came up about as to …
How to apply business to medicine
As a medical student, I had nightmares about my first day in the OR: scrubbing incorrectly, contaminating a sterile field, forgetting the anatomy I had so carefully studied the night before. It seemed like the only thing I could do in that artificially lit room was mess up. After a few cases I came to love the routine and ceremony of each surgery: the timeout; the rhythmic pattern of suture, …
A resident’s guide to being a medical student: In the OR
On Saint Patrick’s Day, my classmates and I will file into a room. Each of us will pick up a small white envelope, and we’ll open them together. Inside those envelopes will be the answer to a question we have wondered for months: Where did I match? Where will I begin my career as an MD, and what kind of doctor will I be? After years of endless studying, hundreds …
I’m afraid of public humiliation on Match Day
Recently, the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education) made the reckless decision to increase work hours to 28-hour shifts for new doctors. Here are the catastrophic consequences of their decision. Here are actual quotes from physicians (de-identified with some patient details changed to protect confidentiality):
“I did my internship in internal medicine and residency in neurology before laws existed to regulate resident …
The secret horrors of sleep-deprived doctors
If you were to sit in on any routine doctors visit, you are bound to hear a few things repeatedly.
“Do you smoke? How much alcohol do you drink, if any? What is your diet like? How much exercise do you get weekly?”
These are questions we are trained to ask as early as the first week of medical school. We are taught to treat not just the conditions a patient presents …
Doctors don’t often follow their own advice
I stared at the ceiling, my hands twisting the drawstring of my scrubs. It was midnight, and I was occupying one of the on-call rooms of the delivery ward. I was going to be observing my first infant delivery, a milestone in my education that had terrified me since beginning medical school. I had been advised to get some sleep, but I was too anxious. I closed my eyes reviewing …
A medical student’s greatest honor
On March 17 at noon, about 18,000 medical students will open envelopes telling them where they will spend the next several years of their lives. It’s residency Match Day, and for many, that letter is one of the most important they will ever receive.
The process is supposed to be straightforward. Medical students, like me, submit applications to hospitals and health systems …
How medical students can game Match Day
The year was 1976. I was graduating from a small branch of my state university with a bachelor’s in chemistry when I first applied to medical school. I was living at home and paying my own tuition. There were no physicians in my family, but I became interested in medicine after I was impressed with a surgeon who had operated on my shoulder. I had a better-than-the-medical-school-acceptance-rate average on my …
I’m retired, but I’m disgusted with medical schools. Here’s why.
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Dear Dr. Wible,
I want to fill you in on what really goes on behind the scenes at my medical school and maybe you can help inform other students about what happens here before they make a huge mistake. If students slip through the cracks of a U.S. medical school, then international med schools in the Caribbean may be the next choice. Some have better residency match rates than others so …
The truth about Caribbean medical schools
“Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership is about coping with change.”
– John Kotter
Even before the results of the recent presidential election were in, few necessities were as present in our daily lives as the need to cope with constant change. This is true across all facets of personal and professional experience in America, but perhaps nowhere more than in health care. Over the next generation, we need to cope …
Medical education needs management training
It’s rare for medical students nowadays to go through training without knowing someone who uses prescription stimulants to study. The ever-popular Adderall and Concerta seem to be omnipresent on college campuses and medical schools, while prescriptions for these medications are suspiciously less common. In environments where success and self-worth are often based on academic achievement, the temptation to succumb to using these pills is high.
The temptation is even higher as …
Does Adderall make you underachieve?
Once upon a time, a princess had decided to go on a long journey.
She had been told about what lay at the end of a long and winding path. It was all of the good things the princess had been wanting; happiness, joy, satisfaction, riches, success, and the ability to cure the sick.
The princess prepared for the trip for many years. She had heard of others who had made the …
We long for the moments in our life that justify our course, that illuminate the banalities of our daily routine, and that instill within us a mission that suddenly harmonizes all that you have done and all that you hope to do.
My first year as a physician-in-training consisted of an insurmountable study load, a constant quarrel with the torturous alliance of fatigue and self-doubt, and the simple reality being a …
A medical student confronts the injustices of our immigration system
During the first year of medical school, one of the most nerve-wracking, but exciting, experiences was learning how to interview and examine patients. At that time, we mostly worked with “standardized patients” — people who are trained specifically to play the role of a scripted medical case. Although working with them seemed incredibly challenging at the time, the rules of engagement were in fact very favorable to us. Asking a question …
The medical student’s ultimate challenge: children
“You’re too pretty to be a doctor.”
“When will I see the real doctor?”
“You’re just going to med school to meet a husband right? I’ve heard that’s what girls do.”
If you’re a female medical student or physician, it’s likely that these phrases are not completely unfamiliar to you. Despite it being 2017 — a fact we continue to point out to highlight how far we should have come by now, but …
Don’t forget that we’re not just women, we’re doctors
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