Many people know that an important part of medical school is choosing a specialty — the field of medicine that you plan to practice for the rest of your career. However, fewer people know just how many different factors weigh on this decision. As my classmates and I navigate through third year, I thought I would share several of the factors that enter the balancing act:
Clinical interest: The simplest, yet …
How should you choose a medical specialty?
I still don’t know how I did it. I don’t know how I got through life as a lower-level neurosurgery resident. I vividly remember the horrific call nights and weekends. There are certain sensations you get when you have gone weeks without more than two or three hours of sleep at a time. It wasn’t the foggy thoughts that bothered me most, or continually feeling cold, or even when I …
The debate over how many hours an intern can work misses the point
When I started medical school, I believed the challenges would be purely academic: a rigorous four-year chapter in my life, with a shiny MD on the last page. I had no idea it would alter the very core of how I approach the world.
I came to medical school immediately after undergrad — a path increasingly less common as admissions committees tout the values of “real life experience.” While I should …
A millennial’s guide to medical school
My first week on call, I got called in for a code blue. This patient happened to be the sickest patient on our unit. He had a tumor on his brain stem that was affecting his vision, hearing, swallowing, and breathing, so he had received a tracheostomy and gastrostomy tube as most palliative patients in his situation do. After a series of neurosurgeries, he was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments. …
This patient reinforced a simple but important lesson
Well, I’m officially that old, bitter resident. I had to walk uphill to medical school 10 miles there and back. “In my day,” medical school was fail, pass, high pass, or honors. I recently found out that the medical school I graduated from has changed the first two years of basic science courses to simply pass/fail (while retaining the honors/high pass grades in clinical rotations). I am so annoyed! Why …
A medical school goes pass-fail: Why this change must happen everywhere
Most third medical students look forward to their psychiatry block. After twelve plus hour days and six day weeks on internal medicine, OB/GYN and surgery, the reasonable hours on psychiatry seems like a dream. While my classmates viewed psychiatry as a break, I dreaded it. This was not my first time on an inpatient psychiatry ward.
My world and fate forever changed when I was twelve years old. Sometimes depression is …
The psychiatry rotation terrifies this medical student. Here’s why.
Incoming students, you need to hear this: it’s not all about you. Let me explain.
My first hospital rotation was on an oncology floor. I answered a patient’s call light by myself. She asked if we had any extra tissues, I said yes, and as I turned to leave she said, “I just got a phone call from my mother’s nurse.” Her mother was in hospice care, and the nurse had …
Caring for someone else is not all about you
You submitted your application in July. You completed all of your secondary essays by mid-September. Other than one interview that resulted in a waitlist decision you’ve heard nothing but radio silence. What can you do?
Whenever I work with medical school applicants I emphasize that the application process is ongoing because the admissions process is fluid. It is not as if you submit your primary application and secondary essays and the …
Medical school applicants: Waitlisted? Want more interviews? Here’s what you can do.
“And then he said, ‘I … I just want to help people you know?’” The table burst out laughing. I struggled not to spit out my breakfast burrito while chuckling. The laughter slowly died down, and I took another gulp of stale hospital coffee. My classmate was recounting the story of one of the pre-med undergraduates he had begun to mentor. I was too tired to think clearly about why …
Don’t laugh: I just want to help my patients
Chapter 1: Physiology
“I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bound by flesh and bone, therein lies a mystery of undefined potential which the cosmos cannot even parallel in mystery and in complexity beautiful and terrifying. It is that which allows movement to leave the study hall beneath the starry sky, professors to lull us to sonorous sweet slumber, to remember minute …
My brain: In sickness and in health
I was incredibly nervous going into my first day in the inpatient child/adolescent psychiatry unit. “Was this where the truly psychotic kids are? Am I going to be safe here?” I wondered as I casually introduced myself to the staff on the floor. After a morning of sitting in on group therapy led by psychologists and occupational therapists, I calmed down. Against the backdrop of the soothing soft pastel colors, …
The one lesson I learned working in a psych unit
“I mean, ever since it happened, I just don’t feel safe anymore … they come out of nowhere … my heart will be pounding and pounding … they can get me at night, even if I’m in my mom’s house. I haven’t worked this whole month, and don’t know how I’ll go back.”
Ms. Smith is a young white woman who is presenting with panic attacks.
“Doctor, the pain is so bad …
Hope: Where can I fill a prescription for that?
We need to fail more tests in medical school. I’m serious.
In first year, our class had two of the most memorable weeks of our schooling: A crash course on biochemistry taught by a professor who is widely accepted as one of the best teachers in our medical school. His in-class lecture style kept students engaged and entertained; I, and many of my classmates, learned tremendous amounts of his material and …
Medical students need to fail more often. Here’s why.
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A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concludes that 27 percent of medical students around the world exhibit symptoms of depression and 11 percent have thought of taking their own lives. Equally troubling is the fact that, among students experiencing depressive symptoms, only 16 percent seek psychiatric treatment.
Other studies have suggested that the prevalence of depression in medical students may …
We need a more humane approach to medical education
Dear patient,
I may never get to meet you, which is a real shame. I think I would have enjoyed getting to know you and working together with you to overcome whatever particular medical issue with which you had come to meet me. We might have learned about each other. We might have learned about our community. We might even have made some kind of change together.
I myself am a patient, …
Are the new work-hours restrictions pushing people out of medicine?
It’s 4:17 a.m. as I begin this entry. I’m scheduled to be at the hospital in 43 minutes for one of my last days on surgical rotation, and I’ve been working on the following text message since 3 a.m.:
“Hi, team. Im afraid that im burned out and anxious. I will be taking today off. Sorry to be blunt but i felt it better than to make up an excuse. Thanks …
The word that best describes this medical student’s experience
According to the Residency Review Committee for Surgery, “A resident may be considered the surgeon only when he or she can document a significant role in the following aspects of management: determination or confirmation of the diagnosis, provision of preoperative care, selection, and accomplishment of the appropriate operative procedure, and direction of the postoperative care.”
In nearly all instances, resident “determination or confirmation of the diagnosis, provision of preoperative …
Are surgical residents really doing the cases they scrub on?
Since being fired from my program as a result of my cancer diagnosis, I am on a mission to help medical students and doctors. After starting the website, Improve Medical Culture, I have found that much of the general population has little sympathy for doctors. Some find us completely unrelatable. Because of this, I wrote the following comparison between dogfighting and medical training. I aim …
How medical training is like dogfighting
I thought long and hard about the financial ramifications of medical school before I started. I already had a job in the medical field that I enjoyed, and I was happy with my level of compensation at the time. After running the numbers, I knew that the choice to pursue medicine would result in a delayed economic benefit that would take at least 15 years to recover, and only through …
The financial ramifications of medical school
When I wrote the article, “My future as a physician looks mediocre at best,” I did not expect the traction that it received. When it received so many shares, I realized there is an important point for us to shed light on. So, I pose the simple question: Is it possible for the modern day doctor to be happy?
Now I don’t mean an overly dramatic happiness involving euphoria, …
Is it possible for the modern day doctor to be happy?
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