Tech-savvy. Attention-craving. Lazy, good-for-nothings.
These are a few of the many traits that have been commonly bestowed upon those born around the last two decades of the 20th century. Commonly known as Generation Y, this demographical cohort of 20- to 30-somethings has certainly sparked mixed reviews from its Gen X and Baby Boomer elders.
But what defines the particular subgroup of young …
What can be said about the Generation Y physician?
A few years ago, I was doing a summer internship in which I looked at health outcomes for hospitalized patients. I sat in an office and read about patients with issues like high blood pressure and cholesterol. At a certain point, I realized that the reports on their outcomes were interesting, but the real solution to the problems I was studying was happening outside my window. My window overlooked a …
The success of health programs depends on execution
I don’t remember all of the details. It was the summer of 1990, sometime in the first 3 months of internship. I spent those months on the 11th floor of the VA Lakeside Medical Center (now the vacant lot just east of the hospital). The VA was familiar territory for me. I spent 3 months there as a third year student, also on the 11th Floor. 11 East, to be …
How I learned to be realistic and survive internship
This New York Times article stimulated thoughts about teaching internal medicine: “Better Ways to Learn“:
In the new book, “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens” (Random House), Benedict Carey, a science reporter for The New York Times, challenges the notion that a high test score equals true learning. He argues that although a good grade may be achieved in the short …
Improve how we learn in medicine
An excerpt from Getting Into Medical School: A Comprehensive Guide for Non-Traditional Students.
Tranditional vs. non-traditional
Traditional premedical students enter a four-year university directly after high school and begin taking courses for their major while also working on their required pre-med core sciences in order to finish their studies in a timely fashion. Most of these students finish their sciences by their sophomore year in hopes of taking the Medical …
Getting into medical school for the non-traditional student
Recently, I have been reflecting more about my musical journey as an organist over the past 15 years. It has been great to learn how to continue my medical training to the best of my ability while still trying to keep my musical interests alive. Despite the busyness of medical training, I have thankfully had opportunities to perform publicly, as well as meet other musicians. I began …
A musician’s guide to medical training
“Why would an artist want to go to medical school?”
It was a good question, and one of my favorite questions asked of me during my medical school interviews. I am what one might define as an artist, and yes, I really wanted to go to medical school. I was a photographer, musician, composer, and actor. I loved the arts and they …
To be or not to be: An artist in medicine
During most of my career as a psychiatrist, I haven’t often dealt directly with death. For the past five years, though, I have had the privilege of spending two days a week treating service men and women returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Listening to their stories and talking with them about their war experiences, I’ve spent much more time thinking about death and dying.
Despite this, I was shocked …
Almost a convert: Donating one’s body to science
A thick green glob landed on my scrub top at the same time that the first drop of sweat rolled down the small of my back. I tried not to grimace and discretely walked over to the hand sanitizer dispenser. But like every other hand sanitizer I had tried, this one was empty. Yesterday I had also discovered that the only bathroom in the hospital had no toilet paper. It …
Treating Ebola patients in Uganda: The dilemma of a doctor’s touch
“I’ve been with my doctor for years and years,” an elderly man, voice hoarse but lilting with fondness for his caregiver, told a nurse in the primary care clinic where I was waiting to see a doctor. “He’s fantastic.”
I was coming to the clinic for a follow-up appointment about an injury for which I’d been seen a few months prior, but neither the initial appointment nor this follow-up were with …
The problem with primary care residency programs
My journey in medicine began as a young child: I was the typical kid who knew I wanted to a be a doctor since I was a child and was thrilled when I was accepted into an 8-year college program which culminated in a medical degree. However, by the end of my undergraduate program, medicine was changing: doctors were spending less …
From PA to MD: An appreciation for physician education
A medical student recently asked my advice on her decision to pursue a career in dermatology. It was about 25 years ago when my own parents encouraged me to pursue this specialty. What was their deal? Perhaps, they anticipated future developments in the field and were hoping for free Botox treatments? As readers know, I rejected the rarefied world of pustules and itchy skin rashes for the glamor of hemorrhoids, …
Should medical students consider lifestyle when choosing a specialty?
My student’s voice trembled as she answered my question. “How do you think you’ve done so far?” I’d asked her. We’d been together on the general medicine inpatient ward for two weeks — the midpoint of the rotation — and as was my usual custom I was giving her feedback on her performance by first asking her to rate her performance …
How to give feedback to medical students
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Medical students are repeatedly taught the importance of the physician-patient relationship. We are told that to be a good doctor we must strive to exhibit compassion, empathy, respect, professionalism and confidence all while applying our medical knowledge to figure out a diagnosis and treatment plan. If you add in the pressure of doing this within a 15-minute visit, all while answering questions faster than an Internet search, it can get …
Vulnerability is a virtue in medicine
Where there is love there is life.
– Mahatma Gandhi
In this first month there is a lot I saw, learned and experienced. Love tops the list. I became an expert in arterial punctures as I did 4 to 5 of them each day in the floors. Each time I headed for an arterial puncture, many things automatically came to my mind: collect all of the required supplies, talk to and comfort …
Lessons from the first month of residency
This evening, I read a post written by a woman who finds herself feeling alone, depressed, desperate, and afraid of losing herself as she goes through medical school.
This post is my response to that woman.
Dear colleague and friend,
You are not alone.
You are far from home. You are far from your family. You are far from the desert, the open …
Responding to a medical student in pain
Scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer once said, “There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”
Like physics, medicine has its share of problems, namely cost control.
Like children, we must open our perception to the problem of cost control to consider other possibilities that better account for the issue than the theories …
Get rid of the trolls in medicine
There is much talk about cynicism in medicine, and I remember being confronted by it almost from the beginning. In fact, I still remember how shocked I was the first time I heard a provider describe a patient in a disparaging matter.
We were responding to a 911 call regarding a woman in her 30s who was feeling short of breath. I remember being worried; she seemed too young to be …
The value of continuity clinics cannot be understated
We’ve gone through four dreadful pre-medical years of learning everything from the composition of atoms to how an apple exerts force when falling off a tree. We’ve taken a massive exam full of content mostly unrelated to our future field only to be put through four more years of intense medical education (and several additional massive exams). We’ve managed to receive a medical degree and have gone through at least …
“Studies show”: It’s time to ban the term
I don’t remember how many patients I saw at the health fair before George came to me; none of them were as memorable. George was a tall, stooped man with a serious expression. His skin was weathered but he couldn’t be called elderly by any means. I guessed that his age hovered somewhere around forty. He looked serious and spoke quietly. He had no interest in being rude, but no …
Attentive questioning: You can’t learn this in a medical school classroom
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