The residency hunt is no small task: Here’s some advice for medical students

Education
December 10, 2017

STAT_Logo‘Tis the season.

Thanksgiving? Sure. Christmas? That too. But for thousands of fourth-year medical students and foreign medical graduates all over the United States, fall through early winter is a time of job hunting — interviewing for residencies. This is a critical step in our training, where we specialize in the individual fields of medicine that will carry …

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The residency hunt is no small task: Here’s some advice for medical students

Reporting an elderly doctor. And suffering from snitch guilt.

Physician
November 21, 2017

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He struggled to hear when people talked to him. He asked the same questions over and over. He fell asleep when really important conversations were going on around him.

But it wasn’t until he missed an emergency call that I knew I had to act.

I spoke to a higher-up about this elderly doctor out of concern for patient …

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Reporting an elderly doctor. And suffering from snitch guilt.

An episode of racism in medical school. Did it affect her care years later?

Physician
October 4, 2017

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The young woman was curled up in a ball. She was sweating and shivering from pain. As she answered my questions — all my many, many questions — tears fell silently from her eyes.

I was a third-year medical student, and the resident I was working with had asked me to evaluate this woman. She had …

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An episode of racism in medical school. Did it affect her care years later?

How a text message saved this patient’s life

Physician
July 17, 2017

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As a new doctor, I’ve learned that the best patient care happens as often outside of the hospital as inside. While we treat sick people and get them tuned up, each patient’s opportunity to get better and stay better often depends on their access to resources beyond clinical walls.

One of those resources, I’m learning, could be mobile technology. I’ve …

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How a text message saved this patient’s life

Losing that patient was one of my most traumatic experiences

Physician
May 20, 2017

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The cadaver lab is a rite of passage in medical school — those few months early on when we dissect a human body to better understand our anatomy. It’s grotesque: peeling back skin, separating muscle sinews, and sawing through bone.

It’s so emotionally jarring that young doctors in training often compartmentalize the experience, and this person before us …

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Losing that patient was one of my most traumatic experiences

Practicing humanistic, patient-centered medicine requires doctors to stifle their humanity

Education
April 2, 2017

STAT_LogoJust before the holidays, I was treating a woman with severe pneumonia. As I examined her, day after day, she told me about her family, their plans for Thanksgiving, and how much she missed her children. I liked her. I cared about her. I even used the promise of free Wi-Fi to convince her teenage daughter to come see her.

The day …

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Practicing humanistic, patient-centered medicine requires doctors to stifle their humanity