Students, residents, and educators writing on KevinMD about how physicians are made: medical school, the match, residency, duty hours, supervision, assessment, mistreatment, and the path from student to practicing physician. Many contributors write while still in training, and many write anonymously. For a maintained record of what students and physicians have said about medical school since 2004, see Medical school: what students and physicians say, in their own words. For what residents and attendings have said about residency itself, see Residency: what residents and attendings say, in their own words.
Throughout most days of clinic rotations, I envision myself panning for gold. Just like I pretended to do as a young child. I am standing in a river that courses through a mountainside somewhere in West Virginia. It is a warm August afternoon; I roll up the pant legs of my overalls and wade into the water, which is just cold enough for you to keep noticing it. As each …
Alright, here you go future medical school applicants. Here it is. My personal statement for medical school, written four years ago.
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Strolling down busy, student-filled Rue Mouffetard, I was surprised to turn around and see my friend’s swollen eye as he ran off; he had been punched in the face. Thirty seconds later, his cousin was attacked and pushed against a car. Initially confused and terrified, I sprinted across the narrow …
How many of our conflicts could be handled better or averted if we had the opportunity to spend some time in the shoes of the person on “the other side”? When we experience a situation through another’s eyes, and when we understand their work and world, true empathy, understanding and trust can emerge.
This is certainly true in our hospitals, where the frenzy of patient care activities involves multiple roles — …
Recently, my friend “Tim” told me that he no longer wished to become a doctor. He had already taken the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) and all his premedical course requirements. But a summer shadowing physicians whom he described as “always unhappy” convinced him to cut his losses.
“I worked hard the last three years,” he explained to me. “But I don’t want to be miserable forever.”
Confession time: I despise presentations that involve the use of a PowerPoint Jeopardy! game. To be clear, I get uncomfortable when any game-like activity appears in a medical teaching presentation.
Not that I don’t think games can have an important role in education — far from it. Heck, I once worked on a presentation that turned our residency conference room into a giant Game of Life board with …
Dear attending, I’m a third-year medical student fresh out of the classroom. I’ve studied from books for years, and now I finally get to see what it is like to be a doctor. It’s exciting but also a daunting experience. I look to you as a guide: what you wear, how you speak, what tools you use, and how you treat others. This is the year I will be socialized …
I was once in your shoes. There was a time where I wore a beat up white coat, pockets overflowing with cards and knew every nook and cranny of the hospital. I was the doctor that woke up the patients in the am, gently asking them to roll over so I could listen to their lungs sounds. That was me.
If you’re anything like me, then you are counting the …
We all go through it. We all have regrets in life. They simply become painful, unescapable daydreams of “what could have been” if only I had only … I often remind young college freshmen who have finally gotten a taste of freedom stepping out of their parent’s home, that what they choose to do in the next 4 years just may dictate the rest of their lives.
When I first applied for medical school, I beamed about exploring not just the science of medicine, but also the art. But what is that art? Some would say it’s clinical experience, combined with being cultured and compassionate and communicating with clarity/conviction. But how would one teach that art?
Journal Watch’s Dr. Allan Brett recently reviewed a multicenter U.S. study following ~300 metastatic cancer patients who had failed initial chemotherapy. The study showed …
A strong wind would have knocked Geraldine to the ground. At 78 pounds, she was underweight, chronically ill, and in need of acute medical or psychosocial care every time she came to the clinic. A survivor of domestic violence with severe mental illness, she had a history of substance abuse and was infected with both HIV and Hepatitis C. In chronic pain but too high a risk to prescribe opioids, …
I’m supposed to speak at the body donor memorial in September. I told the organizers my speech was written. “Don’t worry,” I assured them. “I have it all in my head, just need to get it down on paper. I’m a writer; it’s my process.” But the truth is that I am struggling with what to say. I’ve tried to write it, but I just end up drinking a pot …
At the heart of American medicine is the concept of bedside manner, and with it the concern that doctors are cold and unemotional. Indeed, doctors are exposed to disease and misfortune on a daily basis. A patient who presents with stage IV metastatic stomach cancer is just one of the many hundreds or thousands of such patients that will walk through the hospital doors in the coming years. Quotidian exposure …
My idealism has been stolen. No other way to express how I feel just days past my third anniversary from graduating from fellowship. Post college, I spent thirteen additional years in training to become the specialist physician I am. I am reminded now of my Facebook post stating I was about to start my first “real job” with a picture of the beautifully lit signs at night of the university …
How special is it that, as medical students, we are involved intimately in the lives of strangers? We get to be eyewitnesses to their most vulnerable moments, both celebrating the joy of new life and mourning the loss of loved ones. Students on their OB/GYN rotation triumphantly update their Facebook statuses with their first delivery of a baby, a new soul who will grow up not knowing how special they are …
I collapsed onto the rickety cot in the hospital on-call room. It was 3 a.m. Over the last twenty hours, fueled only by coffee and occasional bites to eat, I had done morning rounds on my patients, assisted with appendix and gall bladder surgeries, inserted and pulled tubes into and out of bodies, cut open a large intestine filled with feces, took patient histories in clinic, attended afternoon teaching, and …
Let me be the first to admit that my mind’s internal and unspoken dialogue produces scathing critiques of the people whose behavior or ideologies are divergent from my own. This isn’t to say that I intentionally treat anyone differently because of personal differences that I observe.
On the contrary, I make a conscious effort to make my actions and spoken words consistent among everyone with whom I interact, particularly when I’m …
For two years, I served as a representative to my medical school’s student affairs committee. My job was to convey medical student concerns and problems. As part of that role, I had a lot of time to think about how and why many medical students experience depression and stress. Two recent articles have led me to write about the issue now: “10 simple solutions to stop medical student suicide,” …
As a medical student having completed my undergraduate major in the humanities, I often receive the question, “Why did you choose to do that?” The underlying thought behind asking why I would choose a major in the humanities while holding the intention to later attend medical school is that medicine is especially distinct from the humanities (and specifically African-American studies in my case). The sciences are just a whole other …
Being an intern and resident in today’s day and age of medicine is proving to be more difficult than ever. I’ve written about resident work hours before, but now that I have finished intern year, I have a lot more to say regarding this issue. I recently reread Dr. Pauline Chen’s article “The Impossible Workload for Doctors in Training,” …
We live in a time of great cynicism and skepticism. We seem to see only the mundane and boring in even the most interesting and spectacular things. The electrical rhythm of the heart that pulses through cardiac tissue and results in a coordinated muscle contraction that effectively ejects blood to the rest of the body for appropriate oxygen delivery is just … a …
