Medical school

Honoring humanity: lessons from a medical encounter

Ellie Qian

Education

May 10, 2024

At the heart of medicine lies humanity. This narrative documents a personal story where I felt deeply connected to this principle as a first-year medical student.

I felt nervous and unsure as I was about to practice medical interviewing with a standardized patient. The scenario was unfamiliar to many of us, involving the care plan for a patient (“Chris”) with stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. Together with his partner (“Jordan”), they …

Situational judgment tests in health care admissions [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

April 30, 2024

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

Join us as we delve into the evolving landscape of health professional admissions processes, focusing on the use of situational judgment tests (SJTs) like Casper and PREview. Our guest, Emil Chuck, a health …

Tips and tricks for presenting research at a medical conference as a premed

Natalie Enyedi

Education

April 26, 2024

Last summer, I had the incredible opportunity to present a case report as a poster at the Women in Ophthalmology Summer Symposium. As a premed student, this was exciting but also quite intimidating.

This meeting is a large national medical conference with about 1,500 attendees, including ophthalmologists of all career stages, many ophthalmology residents, and medical students interested in ophthalmology. I presented the case of a child who had experienced retinopathy …

Your A+ in anatomy and physiology won’t improve the American health care system

Faith Crittenden, MD, MPH, Pratiksha Yalakkishettar, MD, Pauline Huynh, MD, and Whitney Sambhariya, MD, PhD

Physician

April 25, 2024

March 30th marks National Doctors’ Day – a day meant to honor the immense work and impact physicians have in caring for our patients and their communities. As resident physicians, we are proud and honored to have joined this noble profession.

However, on this particular Doctors’ Day, we are also acutely aware that medicine is–once again–at a historic crossroads. The recent waves of sweeping anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) legislation threaten …

Dealing with discouragement: strategies for aspiring medical students

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Education

April 13, 2024

Do you remember times when your dreams, hopes, and aspirations were crushed by teachers and other authority figures? We’ve all encountered such times. These experiences shape our character in negative ways and can lead to devastating psychological effects. This kind of negative influence can greatly impact our self-esteem and self-worth, instilling a deep-seated fear of failure. It can cause us to question our abilities and potential, leading to imposter syndrome.

Repeated …

The role of AI in medical education: Embrace it or fear it?

Amelia Mercado and J. Wesley Boyd, MD, PhD

Tech

April 8, 2024

Artificial intelligence is upon us and likely will forever change the way we interact with learning and education. Despite this reality, educational institutions seem to fall into either of two camps. One camp seems loath to acknowledge that AI exists. A faculty member who helps with curriculum development at one medical school recently shared, “We don’t know what to do about AI. Do we act like it’s not there, or …

Ode to the gap year(s) before medical school

Ilaria Simeone

Education

April 7, 2024

Taking gap year(s) before medical school does not mean that you have failed or that you are “lesser than” as a student. These are the words I needed to hear as a resolute pre-med student who used to proudly proclaim that I was “going straight through” to med school. It was like a badge of honor—why do anything that would delay my path to becoming a physician?

The pre-med years …

From numbness to empathy: a reflection on medical practice

Katayun Fethat

Education

March 31, 2024

I’m not sad – I’m numb.

My friend, a seasoned internal medicine resident, revealed a chilling truth after grappling with eight patient codes – three lives eluded salvation. The gravity of his words froze me. When did the mourning for human existence transform into a necessity to numb our very core? I found myself pondering the onset of this desensitization, this “numbing.”

I thought back to my own experiences as a third-year …

The unspoken skill of touch in health care

Natalie Enyedi

Education

March 31, 2024

What drew me to spending my gap year as a medical assistant was the advertised “direct patient care experience.” While patient care is my favorite part of the job, it comes with its own unique challenges for a first-time health care worker.

An unexpected challenge that I had to overcome with patient care was learning how to touch patients. I am tasked daily with removing sutures, staples, assisting with wound care, …

Medical school gap year: Why working as a medical assistant is perfect

Natalie Enyedi

Education

March 24, 2024

The words “gap year” are enough to panic any high-achieving premedical student with their heart set on matriculating straight into medical school. Many students feel like a gap year will set them back in their journey to become a doctor, adding more years to the ever-long path to an MD behind their name. What these students do not realize is the value that a meaningful gap year, or more, can …

Navigating a medical school leave of absence [PODCAST]

The Podcast by KevinMD

Podcast

March 22, 2024

Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes!

We dive deep into the topic of taking a leave of absence from medical school with Stephanie E. Moss. Stephanie, a medical student who made the decision to take a break between her …

Fostering Black joy in an anti-DEI environment: community, resilience, and equity

Bernice Fokum, MD, Udoka Oji, MD, and Abdullah Pratt, MD

Physician

March 22, 2024

As Black History Month draws to a close, it is crucial to recognize the ongoing challenges faced by Black physicians and the importance of fostering diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and belonging in the medical field. National rhetoric condemning DEI efforts has made for an increasingly difficult environment for Black medical trainees to thrive. This Black History Month, we had the honor of hosting three events aimed at celebrating Black excellence …

How Russian studies enriched my journey to become a physician

Alexander Camp

Education

March 18, 2024

Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. Repin. Stravinsky. While many people may not appreciate the significance of these Russian geniuses, or think that knowledge of them could enhance a pre-med education, I would not be the same person without learning about them. For me, pursuing a Russian major was more than a list of vaguely interesting classes or language study; it was a deeper dive into the qualities of a culture that I am …

To the physician who didn’t match: You are not forgotten

Amna Shabbir, MD

Education

March 15, 2024

Match day. Many of you are rejoicing in the outcomes, while many of you might be experiencing these “other” emotions. They might sound like rejection, shame, hopelessness, despair, disappointment, anger, exhaustion, or self-doubt.

The wounds from this year’s match might still be fresh, and I do not want to thrust any toxic positivity on you. It’s okay if you are feeling awful right now; it’s natural. Give yourself time to process …

How situational judgment tests help medical schools evaluate applicants

Emil Chuck, PhD

Education

March 13, 2024

Within 48 hours of every job posting, hundreds of applications pour in. As the hiring manager, you want to fill the position within two months, or your supervisor might cut it out of your budget. After triaging the unqualified applicants using data-driven filters and artificial intelligence tools, you still have a few hundred left. At this point, many hiring managers invite the remaining candidates to take a situational …

How medical training indoctrinates toxic beliefs in physicians

Chelsea Turgeon, MD

Education

February 22, 2024

There’s a great irony that exists within medicine. We are taught to critically examine all scientific evidence; however, there are a series of beliefs we learn about the profession as a whole that we’re meant to accept without question.

Essentially, during our medical training, we are indoctrinated with a set of harmful beliefs about what it means to be a doctor. These beliefs harm not only us as individual physicians but …

The unseen struggles of Native medical students

Katlin Wilson, Cailean MacColl, and Amanda Dionne

Education

February 6, 2024

The average medical student spends anywhere from 40 to 80 hours a week studying to become the future of health care, not to mention the hours outside of work that include family, community, jobs, volunteering, research, and day-to-day necessities. The average student goes to class, studies, goes home and studies some more.

However, this is not the reality for many Native medical students. We crave the ability to wake up, go …

Just how personal should personal statements be on medical school applications?

Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA

Education

January 20, 2024

I read an essay advocating the disclosure of personal trauma on medical school applications as a means of overcoming stigma and taboo often associated with rape and other forms of trauma. The authors lamented that a culture of silence persists in medicine despite movements such as #MeToo. They concluded: “We, as physicians, have a duty to reduce shame to promote recovery in both our patients and in ourselves.”

Not …

A call for LGBTQ+ inclusion in medicine’s definition of “underrepresented”

Mel Ebeling and Cortlyn Brown, MD

Education

January 19, 2024

In an impromptu listing of all the diseases his children had, I never would have guessed that the next word to come out of my attending’s mouth was “gay.” As an LGBTQ+ medical student with scars on my chest to prove it, this encounter only added to the collection of instances where I felt the weight of being underrepresented in medicine. Or am I?

Each year, the Association of American …

What doctors can learn from actors about artificial intelligence

Surgical Fitness Research Pod & Yoshihiro Katsuura, MD

Tech

January 17, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to revolutionize the practice of medicine by expanding our knowledge and reducing our workload. However, physicians should tread carefully and take heed of the example set by other industries. For example, AI was at the core of the negotiations in the recent 2023 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. “AI was a dealbreaker,” said Fran Drescher, a union leader of the …

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