“The stethoscope is dying.” That’s the word on the wards.
Clunky and less precise than what modern technological advances allow, many say it will soon find itself useful as only a historical artifact of 19th and 20th-century medicine. While it may pain many clinicians, it’s tough to argue the stethoscope’s immunity to Moore’s law.
As technology allows us to make better, more accurate tools, we embrace them as …
There is no app for physical diagnosis
After four brutal years of medical school, my colleagues and I finally obtained our medical degrees. As graduation approached, I couldn’t help but reflect on the whole experience, but when I tried discussing the matter with my friends, I discovered that we all had difficulty articulating the precise concoction of emotions we were feeling. Most simply summed up the feeling as “weird.” On graduation eve, however, I found myself in …
A love letter to my medical school class
For many people in medical training, one period of time that they look forward to is the elective period. Most of the time, these periods are available for people to explore potential career opportunities, whether it is a certain subspecialty or a research opportunity. Usually, people are not on call and weekends are free, luxuries that are often sparse during the rigors of medical training. Most of the time, one …
How violating trust during residency undermines patient care
I handed her the humungous gardening shears and watched as she snapped through each rib providing access to the silent heart of our cadaver. Abruptly, the fire alarm rang out cutting short the most physically taxing day of our yearlong anatomy lab course. Once we had evacuated, firemen streamed into the building, and I wondered if my lab-mates were also thinking about the horrific scene these men would encounter as …
The donors were our first patients
On May 11, 2016, we lost another bright, young soul to suicide. Sean Petro was in his third year at the USC Keck School of Medicine and is the third tragedy at his school in the last two years.
On April 23, 2015, we lost Kevin Dietl to suicide just weeks before he was to graduate medical school. Kevin’s parents were so excited to attend their son’s graduation. Instead, they attended …
Sign this petition to prevent medical student and resident suicides
“Hey, Doc!” I heard the patient say as I blazed by bed A.
Bed A is the “door” bed. My patient was in bed B, the “window” bed. I had just met him; it was a new inpatient consult. For all the rules and regulations surrounding patient confidentiality, the curtains between beds do little to protect privacy since inevitably there will be audible conversations about symptoms, diagnosis, and management between patients and …
A surgeon is humbled by unexpected feedback
There was a morning where I felt like the smallest human being on earth. It was a morning spent in the OR, where it seemed like I could do nothing right. I placed the Foley incorrectly on my first attempt, and then ended up removing it incorrectly as well. I nonchalantly brushed past the robot we were using for the case, which was already draped and prepped, and whose sterility I …
Nothing can cultivate humility like medicine
As a third-year medical student rotating on the internal medicine service at the VA Hospital, I took care of an elderly patient who was suffering from decompensated alcoholic cirrhosis. His condition was complicated by hepatorenal syndrome, multiple electrolyte imbalances, and hepatic encephalopathy.
It was most complicated however by various ethical challenges and by the social and familial factors surrounding this patient’s course of treatment during his one-month stay on our service …
The swastika-donning patient who refused his lactulose
A recent AMA Wire article highlighted the resident depression endemic and identified some strategies for improvement. The upshot: Too many trainees are unhappy with their jobs.
The most important tool used to gauge trainees’ satisfaction with their training programs is the ACGME survey. Since the ACGME is the organization that formally accredits …
Medical trainees cannot live on grit alone
Charles Bukowski once said, “Wherever the crowd goes, run in the other direction. They’re always wrong.”
How does one become a master? What process do we use to have the highest probability of success? Here are some examples.
“Picasso was an extraordinary craftsman, even when measured against the old masters. That he chose to struggle to overcome his visual heritage in order to find a language more responsive to the modern world …
What it takes to be a great doctor: Master the fundamentals
On my recent tour of residency programs, I had the pleasure of meeting many foreign medical graduates (a.k.a. FMGs; not to be confused with international medical graduates, who are U.S. citizens who go abroad for medical school).
Almost uniformly, they struck me as confident, mature and articulate. Many were older than me, some by as much as 10 or 15 years. Most had extensive research experience, and a few had even …
Foreign medical graduates get a raw deal. Here’s why.
Popular shows like Gray’s Anatomy, ER, and House, MD have given the television watching public a good eyeful when it comes to the inner workings of medicine, hospitals, and emergency rooms. They have also shown us how the personalities of those who take up the stethoscope and reflex hammer run the gamut from the sweet, demure, tentative types to the sons of bitches who cut first and ask questions later.
I …
The stories of my medical school mentors
As a fourth-year medical student, I love introducing myself to patients as the “extra eyes and ears of the team, so feel free to tell me anything you forgot or would like to address, even if you think it’s irrelevant or burdensome. I will be your advocate.”
As I establish rapport with them, the walls come down, and they often provide important information that helps my team provide the best care …
The inspiring reasons why this medical student wanted to become a doctor
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Aristotle said, “To avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.”
Sometimes I wish I was nothing; surely, that would just be so much easier. I screw up all of the time. And I hate it. My latest gaffe was killing our simulated patient by causing him to aspirate. I’m sure no one in my group is still persevering on the events that unfolded during the sim. I also really …
It’s OK for medical students to make mistakes. Here’s why.
Meet Dr. Svetlana Kleyman, a powerhouse chief surgery resident with a heart of gold, who works 16-hour days and runs marathons in her free time. Just 18 months before she was to graduate from SUNY Downstate, she developed a spinal infection that left her paralyzed from the waist down. After months of rehab, she was cleared by her doctors to resume work …
A paralyzed surgery resident is told not to come back. She needs your help.
There’s a window in the driveway to the dental school that always catches my attention. Usually, the old, horizontal blinds are hanging at a lopsided, half-open-half-closed stance. Occasionally, though, they are open all the way, and you can see inside.
For the first few months of my dental school education, I felt like that was my only window into dentistry: through the obstructed, double-paned division between me and the dental school …
A case for the integration of medicine and dentistry
Readers know that I believe that servant leadership should inform leadership and management decisions. We who have the privilege of having leadership positions at medical schools, therefore, have as a primary responsibility to our students.
Being a medical student, while a reward and a privilege, is nonetheless a stressful experience. The first two years at most U.S. medical schools have the students grinding through the basic sciences related to medicine. The volume …
Medical schools owe their students more
Every year around Match Day, medical and pre-med students alike worry about a rumored “residency cliff.” The theory is that the number of new medical school graduates will soon outstrip the existing inventory of residency positions, and the overflow applicants will be left in professional limbo.
While that picture seems scary, it’s time for some good news. I’ve believed for years that this concern is more phantom than real, but now …
U.S. medical school graduates aren’t enough to fill the physician shortage
I’ll just start this off by saying that I am not exactly sure where I stand on the white coat thing. One part of me loves the white coat as a symbol, a shield against disease, and a place with pockets to put my things; and then there are other days when I just want to throw that germ-ridden cotton barrier to the doctor-patient relationship in the trash, roll up my sleeves, …
The white coat doesn’t mean much anymore
Dear future self,
Remember that day on surgery you stepped into the OR for the first time? How you had no idea you were supposed to pull your own gloves for the scrub nurse from the supplies cabinet, or that you needed to stand an arm’s length away from the equipment table to avoid breaking sterility? Remember how scared you felt? How clumsy you were when you scrubbed in, in a …
Residents should pay it forward to medical students
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