Medical education

2,303 articles · Since 2007

Articles, page 68

Time macho: Why I’m part of the problem

March 8, 2016Mar 8, 2016

It was a concept intimately familiar to me long before anyone gave it a name. From my earliest days in college, I felt surrounded by people who packed their days with meetings, activities, sports practices or competitions; classes, study groups, and research; for whom every moment had been spoken for and each day didn’t so much end as spill over into the next. The standard was clear: to do any …

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Time macho: Why I’m part of the problem

The problem with cultural competency in medical education

Jennifer Tsai

March 8, 2016Mar 8, 201686

“Let’s say a Chinese patient comes into labor and delivery … simply logs onto the CultureVision website. Next, click on the Chinese section and finally click 'Labor, Birth and Aftercare.' Just that quickly you have the information you are looking…

“Let’s say a Chinese patient comes into labor and delivery … simply logs onto the CultureVision website. Next, click on the Chinese section and finally click ‘Labor, Birth and Aftercare.’ Just that quickly you have the information you are looking for.”

CultureVision boasts that it is the “first comprehensive, user-friendly database that gives health care professionals access to culturally competent care.” The website’s automatic slideshow, entitled “Did you Know?” shifts between messages such as: …

A resident’s guide to being a medical student

M. Alexandra Friedman, MD

March 5, 2016Mar 5, 2016

Though I am two years into my residency, I still experience flashbacks to my time as a medical student on the wards. The adrenaline of arriving at the hospital 2 hours before rounds, scrambling to see my patients, constructing a note that no one would ever look at, and preparing a hastily-constructed presentation to deliver in a half-performance, half-examination outside of our patient’s room.

I remember being the object of a …

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A star medical student feels like he made a terrible decision

Anonymous

March 3, 2016Mar 3, 201620

It is February of our last few months of clinical rotations. I am a rising fourth-year medical student at a well-known East Coast institution with a not-so-bad track record, I guess you could say. I scored in the top percentile for the USMLE Step 1, honored my third-year rotations, and have comments from attendings about how I am destined to succeed in this career. One might think that at this point …

Should medical school have a language requirement?

Hamsika Chandrasekar

February 29, 2016Feb 29, 201649

Over the past eight months, I’ve rotated at the Palo Alto VA, Santa Clara Kaiser, Stanford outpatient family medicine, and pediatrics clinics, and most recently, at Santa Clara Valley. At the VA and Kaiser, all my patients spoke English. Occasionally, at Stanford’s outpatient sites, our patients spoke a language other than English; however, this never felt like a barrier to care because Stanford had phone interpreters available, as well as …

How filmmaking made me a better science communicator

Edison Leung

February 29, 2016Feb 29, 2016

One of my favorite shows to watch as a kid was Bill Nye the Science Guy. I fondly recall being glued to the television as Bill enthusiastically explained the mysterious wonders of the universe with all of his props, gizmos, and gadgets. Unlike science teachers at school, whose seemingly endless lectures bored me, Bill Nye’s hands-on, interactive approach held my attention. He simplified complex science concepts so well that even …

This doctor never gave up. And look where he is today.

Gregory Shumer, MD

February 26, 2016Feb 26, 20163

There comes a time in most people’s training when adversity threatens to become overwhelming and swallow them whole. It could be as a medical student, while spending countless hours in the library or when on demanding rotations. Or, it could…

Or, it could be during residency, from the 80-hour work weeks or the stressful patient care situations. It might even happen well into training, when the weekly grind just becomes too much. Burnout, generally …

Tips to rank your match list. Here’s how this medical student did it.

Jennifer Adaeze Anyaegbunam

February 22, 2016Feb 22, 2016

As an early third year medical student, I had a few attending physicians tell me that MD stands for “make decisions.” I find myself subject to these sorts of pep talks when I answer their clinical questions with a response…

For example, while being pimped on the next step in managing a patient, I might have responded with a …

A physician aces his USMLE and ABIM board exams. Here are his tips for success.

Farokh Jamalyaria, MD

February 21, 2016Feb 21, 2016

In this article, I’ll discuss a medicine-specific strategy that many of my physician colleagues and I have used over the years to learn dense, complicated information quickly and effectively, and to do well on board exams. These are the two…

These are the two most important tenets of studying for a medical board examination:

1. Find the highest-yield information and memorize it cold. With active methods such as mnemonics, teaching others, lecturing “to the wall,” writing notes …

The questionable competency of today’s medical and surgical residents

Gary B. Nackman, MD

February 21, 2016Feb 21, 20163

What does it mean to be competent at something? Competency may be defined as the ability to do something successfully or efficiently. When it comes to determining if a physician is competent in his profession, no one, board, no organization, no government, no residency training program or hospital actually will state that an individual is competent. There are significant legal ramifications to declaring someone as competent to practice medicine, and …

The decline and fall of medical writing

James Lynch, MD & Richard Gunderman, MD, PhD

February 20, 2016Feb 20, 20166

George Orwell said, “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” If Orwell was right, the profession of medicine and the patients it cares for could be in big trouble. As a result of ongoing changes in healthcare, today’s medical students and residents are being asked to write much less than in the past, with a …

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The decline and fall of medical writing

An open letter to my little sister in medical school

Romila Mushtaq, MD

February 19, 2016Feb 19, 20162

Dear LilSis, Fifteen years ago, I met your father, Dr. Braxton Wannamaker, when I as a neurology resident at the same institution where you are now a medical student. Dr. Wannamaker mentored me in neurology, epilepsy research, and life. I…

Dear LilSis,

Fifteen years ago, I met your father, Dr. Braxton Wannamaker, when I as a neurology resident at the same institution where you are now a medical student. Dr. Wannamaker mentored me in neurology, epilepsy research, and life. I am blessed that the entire Wannamaker family took me in as an adopted daughter, and that is how I got to meet you, sweet Louise.

The fashion we wore, boys we dated, …

Medical students can’t stop talking about school. Here’s why that’s healthy.

Nathaniel Fleming

February 17, 2016Feb 17, 2016

On a recent Friday, I went out with a handful of classmates for some food to celebrate the end of a particularly long and tiring week of school. Interestingly, although we had spent hours each day shuttling between lecture halls, the hospital, and clinical exam rooms, the conversation kept drifting back to one, very familiar topic: school. We talked about everything we had endured that week, compared notes on our …

I left medical school for a startup. Here’s why I went back.

Gina Siddiqui

February 13, 2016Feb 13, 2016

Last May, I reflected on my path from medical school to starting a health tech company in San Francisco. In an environment which fetishizes the “dropout founder,” I always met perplexment when I said I planned on returning to medical school. Now that graduation day is around the corner, I thought I’d shed light on my choice for clinical practice and what I learned on the other side.

Medical …

A quantitative analysis of the first year of internal medicine residency

Peggy Bui, MD, MBA

February 11, 2016Feb 11, 20162

In a few weeks, thousands of medical students find out where they have matched for residency. I still remember the excitement and anxiety of peeling back that envelope and hoping I would see my top choice. My medical school had a tradition of putting each 4th year’s name in an old doctor’s bag. One by one, our dean would pull out a name, the student would contribute $1 to the …

Listen to this doctor’s advice to medical students

Susan Hecker, MD

February 9, 2016Feb 9, 20166

It’s been six years since I graduated from internal medicine residency. Enough time to give me some perspective, but short enough to still remember the highs and lows vividly. I recently had the opportunity to talk with a bright and…

The conversation turned to any advice that I had or maybe I felt obligated to give some as part …

5 simple strategies to get the residency you want

Scott P. Stringer, MD

February 7, 2016Feb 7, 2016

All medical students start out as the best of the best: You had to be to get into medical school. So now that you’re in, what are some of the things you can do to attain the specialty you really…

All medical students start out as the best of the best: You had to be to get into medical school. So now that you’re in, what are some of the things you can do to attain the specialty you really want? How do you set yourself apart from your peers?

1. Get out of your head. Telling yourself you can’t achieve a competitive residency is your first barrier. If you can’t even …

The single most important lesson for doctors in training

Steven Zhang, MD

February 4, 2016Feb 4, 20163

I recently saw a patient who, against all odds, survived an aortic dissection. Miraculously, he was alive after the wall of his aorta -- the largest and most important vessel in the body -- began to rip apart. Aortic dissections…

I recently saw a patient who, against all odds, survived an aortic dissection. Miraculously, he was alive after the wall of his aorta — the largest and most important vessel in the body — began to rip apart. Aortic dissections are so violent and agonizing that a large portion of these patients don’t survive. Yet somehow, my patient was still able to sit upright in his chair and recount his …

You’re a doctor and you’re sick. Make your health a priority.

Joyce Park, MD

February 1, 2016Feb 1, 2016

Last week I, like many around me, came down with a horrible cold. My husband got sick the week before and was in bed all weekend sleeping and trying to recover, and lo and behold, come Monday, I started having…

I knew the approximate course of the cold since I’m a doctor, and I saw my husband go through it, but I thought I could be strong and push through. I continued …

When patients question the motives of their physicians

Heather Flynn

January 30, 2016Jan 30, 201650

I was recently scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I came upon a long message chain started by one of my friends, an older woman from my hometown in New Jersey. She had seen a discussion given by a drug representative who was promoting administering Gardasil to early adolescents for the prevention of cervical cancer, and my friend wanted to know how other parents felt about allowing their children to …