As a medical student, I have encountered more emotional and psychological pain as a direct result of my training than I could have previously anticipated. My pain may not be physical (though sometimes it is secondary to sleep deprivation), but it is real. I look around me and am reminded of who I do not want to be, and the kind of person I would dread becoming. At first, I …
Hurting medical students healing hurting patients
I am forced to write anonymously because of gross neglect by my residency program regarding standard ACGME duty-hour rules. If my name were published, it would identify my program.
As a PGY-2, I worked 100+ hours per week on average last year while taking primary call for my urology department. (Admittedly, the PGY-2 is the historic “worst year” for any urology resident.) On a quarterly basis (depending on manpower), we take …
This resident works 100+ hours per week, but is still a poorly trained surgeon
When you hear people say, “I don’t want to vaccinate my kid. Why would I give them autism?” It’s hard not to get upset and meet your patients with some judgment.
John and Carly were middle-class Americans that had a lot of misconceptions about vaccines — mostly from the media. They loved their two-year-old daughter Leslie and wanted the best for her. They didn’t understand that we wanted the same thing. …
Don’t judge anti-vaxers. Talk to them.
There is a strange feeling that every kid has experienced: the flip-flop sensation of your stomach dropping while you careen down the descent of an enormous roller coaster; the sinking swoop of a high-speed elevator dropping to the ground floor. My children find it hiding along a rolling country road, driving to the lake in our jeep. With the top down and the sun shining, they shriek and beg for …
A physician who lost a patient to home birth
When I was heading to a retreat held by the physician who started the ideal medical care movement, Dr. Pamela Wible, I expected an orderly and structured program on how to improve the current culture of medicine. I knew, with about 40 physicians and 10 other medical students, there would be a lot of Type A personalities since that’s typically the sort of people that go into medicine. While I …
Are nudists, nature, and hippies the cure for an uptight doctor?
It is 6:08 p.m. on a Monday night, and I am sitting in an unlocked patient exam room, my uneaten lunch opened in front of me, clicking through a patient’s chart, all to the constant whir of my breast pump. I last breastfed my infant at 6 a.m. this morning, and the discomfort in my chest has only amplified as the 12th hour has gone by without time to express …
The disappointment of mothers in medicine
I am writing why I as a physician voted for Donald Trump for president. This election has caused such outcry that I hesitate to put my name. I want to also say that I am a female physician. I feel that I need to express why I voted the way that I did.
I am still in an independent practice with one other physician. We are hanging on by a thread, …
This physician voted for Donald Trump. Here’s why.
I have a memory of feeling overwhelming anger and animosity as a 10 year old. I was holding my father’s spot in the checkout line at Walmart in rural Illinois as he ran to grab the paper towels he had forgotten. He quickly darted back in line into the spot that I had saved him as he knew leaving me surrounded by candy for longer than a couple of minutes …
After the election: I am frustrated with how people have been expressing themselves
I arrive 7:15, 15 minutes before I was supposed to come in. I make sure to bring a shelf review book, knowing that I will be getting significant use of it that day.
After surreptitiously observing my surroundings, I attempt to seek out a physician of sorts, a guide, a mentor, a guru that could aid in my quest for knowledge and experience. I am seated in a chair against a …
In memory of what medical education used to be
A letter from a physician to her former employer.
This may seem to come out of the blue for you, but for me, it is something I have thought about often. You will likely not remember the details like I do, so let me spark your memory.
It was a Thursday, and my husband, who I have known since I was 19 — not unlike you and your wife — was diagnosed …
Doctors are not superhuman. They are simply human. And that’s OK.
Over the past month, I’ve slowly rediscovered my love for writing. Though I have never considered myself a strong writer, I have fond memories of it providing an outlet for my thoughts. The history essays that everyone dreaded writing in high school were some of my favorite assignments. I spent days wording and rewording my sentences while my classmates wrote them quickly the night before they were due. It felt …
A medical student rediscovers a love for writing
We brought his family into a separate room with plenty of chairs. Sitting to the right of his father and mother, our attending uttered the first words in the room.
“I think you know what I am about to say.”
His mother took in a deep sigh, her eyes already swollen from inconsolable tears.
“I think he is dead.”
The whole room sank. We were all punched in the gut by those words.
“Oh my …
Every day in the hospital, I walk through someone’s personal hell on earth
For the first couple of years of medical school, the constant stream of exams and the anxiety that came along with each one seemed never-ending. I told myself that it was worth sacrificing my personal health to better the lives of others.
I put off addressing my own mental health needs to keep advancing to the next level of education. I let stress manifest itself in new ways that my body …
What it feels like to be a patient from a doctor’s point-of-view
This has not been an uncommon occurrence over the past 2 1/2 years. In my bed with my laptop when I should be asleep, looking at blogs, taking quizzes, checking out stats on different specialties to find my place in this crazy world we call medicine. This wouldn’t occur all the time but enough that it was noticeable and something I clearly wanted resolved.
On these nights my thinking started out …
A medical student realizes how he could change the system
Medical school attracts very similar kind of people. Most of us are high-achieving, intelligent people with the common goal of helping others. It is beautiful to think of all of the potential patients we could serve working together. Applying to medical school and medical education often suppresses that potential.
Somewhere in between all of the courses one must take to enter medical school and the dreadful MCAT, it becomes a number …
Stop the competition in medical school
My dad is a locally famed and sincere career politician. All my life I have seen him value public service over personal wealth. As a young lawyer, he worked in Washington DC for the Department of Justice during the civil rights movement, and he often shares stories of his tour of duty in 1960’s Alabama. After that service, he came back to West Virginia where he has been elected to …
Donald Trump triggers deep-seated human instincts
To whom it may concern:
I am writing to you with great sadness, but with relentless determination to ignite change. I am a doctor with a disability. Two years ago I began residency training in pediatrics. The privilege was overwhelming as I stood a doctor in the very halls where I had been wheeled in as a patient with a brain tumor. I couldn’t believe that I had actually made it, …
A hospital bullies a physician and threatens termination for her disability
Exercise. Growing up I competed in multiple sports. The physical enhancement of the human body through movement sparked my interest in human physiology and kinesiology. Consequently, my interest in physiology ultimately led me to medical school. It only felt natural, when medicine became what felt like the bane of my existence, that I’d revert back to this pursuit’s humble beginning. Given the fact that time was a scarce resource during internship, …
6 steps to overcoming physician burnout
Medical training in the United States is a long and tedious process. It begins in college, when one must complete the mandatory prerequisite curriculum and take a medical entrance exam; your score on which is directly compared to other applicants, immediately labeling you as a competitive candidate or not. The process of applying requires the completion of multiple comprehensive applications, the compilation of countless hours of research, clinical experience, letters …
Is burnout inevitable during medical training?
Dear Ms. Bresch,
I couldn’t help but notice the barrage of negative press you’ve received lately regarding the significant price increases in EpiPens. A 461 percent increase since 2007, to be exact. People who require this medication for themselves or their children are up in arms about spending over $600 for a twin pack of autoinjectors. Most of these people have life-threatening anaphylaxis if they are exposed to certain allergens. To …
An open letter to Heather Bresch: What is legal is not always ethical
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