Students, educators, and physicians writing on KevinMD about medical school: admissions and what they select for, the cost of tuition and the debt it leaves, the curriculum and what students say it does and does not teach, Step 1 and the test-prep industry, pass/fail, mistreatment and depression in training, the match, Caribbean schools, and what should change. Most contributors are students writing while still in school, many of them anonymously. For what physicians have said about paying off that debt and the money decisions that follow, see Physician personal finance: what physicians say about their own money, in their own words. For a maintained record of what students and physicians have said about medical school on KevinMD since 2004, see Medical school: what students and physicians say, in their own words. For what physicians and deans have said for and against affirmative action and diversity in admissions, see Race and medicine: what physicians say, in their own words. For what international and Caribbean graduates have said about the Match and visas, see Immigration and medicine: what physicians say about immigrant doctors and immigrant patients, in their own words.
So, what’s the problem?
Alright, anybody that has been through the process knows that applying to residency programs is a long and expensive process.
The issue is not how long it is, or honestly how expensive it is, even though those are problems.
The issue is the secrecy of it all from an applicant’s perspective.
As an applicant, you don’t know what is on the deans’ letter, your letters of recommendation, and the residency …
Read more…
Why residency applications need to change
While I am commonly considered to be a friendly person, I never had very many friends. This was likely because I was too much. I am was too brown, too bookish, too loud, too assertive, just too much in every single category. It was hard for people to accept me, and I gave up early on in high school to make friends. I fell in where I could, my boyfriends …
Read more…
Dirt masks and couples massages: My trauma bonds in medical school
“When I grow up, I want to be a pediatrician or a surgeon.”
Those were the words I wrote as I graduated fifth grade. I often ask myself how I have been able to navigate a world so unfamiliar to me, how I have carried on with my ambitions despite being such a large minority in medical spaces. Retracing my steps, I find that I always end up with the same …
Read more…
Addressing the lack of Black male physicians through early intervention
The article can be read or listened to. It is in the format of an interview between a radio host and the sleep scientist and director for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, Matthew Walker. He takes the audience through the journey of sleep and the dangers of sleep deprivation. Some of the risks include but aren’t limited to concentration, memory, blood glucose, and, most importantly, immunity. …
Read more…
Medical school and the science of sleep
In nearly every field, ongoing education is warranted, if not explicitly required. Be it the informal transfer of knowledge between colleagues, or a more formalized process like recertification, nearly every profession mandates some form of maintenance of knowledge and skills. However, there are few professions that produce information at the volume and pace of health care. Indeed, since ancient times when early Greek and Egyptian texts provided …
Read more…
The evolution of medical training in dermatology and the impact of technology
“You’re superficial,” the dean of the curriculum explained to me as we sat in an empty lecture hall. I had just finished a lecture when he pulled me aside to share his assessment of my progress as a student. By this point in my second year of medical school, I had become more focused on the health and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] persons and communities, …
Read more…
Professional gay: Charting a career in LGBTQ health
“Congratulations on losing that much weight! Whatever you’re doing, keep it up,” my attending says as she bobs her head vigorously in approval, then turning back to the EMR computer to type up some notes.
And all I could see was the patient slightly shifting on the exam table, their face smiling — but their whole body seemingly screaming discomfort and dismay.
Before my attending sailed into the room, the patient told …
Read more…
One can’t always assume congratulations are in order
We’ve all been told by a well-meaning friend, family member, or therapist, “You can’t care for others unless you care for yourself first.” Put your oxygen mask on first, blah blah. But in medical training, we repeatedly demonstrate that, unfortunately, you can provide great care for patients while neglecting yourself. Medicine rewards self-sacrifice and hard work, often at the cost of physician happiness or wholeness.
Maybe it starts in undergraduate school, …
Read more…
Medicine rewards self-sacrifice often at the cost of physician happiness
I had a nightmare last Christmas. I thrashed in bed for at least an hour before slipping into a seat at the start of a medical lecture. Some of my classmates were present, and while standing next to a friend’s desk, he said, “Wow, your knee is red and throbbing, did you know?” Before acknowledging his comment, I became aware that the lateral side of my right knee was red, …
Read more…
Joy is our antibiotic. Let not your stings fester.
I learned a valuable lesson about mentoring medical students during clinical rotations amid the COVID pandemic, and it’s not as easy as you think.
I have been in medical education, either in it or teaching it, for 20 years. I have spent countless hours doing lectures, giving hospital grand rounds, or leading bedside teaching rounds to those who want to follow in my footsteps as a clinical expert. But some are …
Read more…
Medical student rotations amid COVID: Welcome to medicine little grasshopper
As we sat at home watching our physician colleagues on the news draped with masks and PPE calmly explaining their dire situations last year, one cannot help but wonder what kind of environment and community cultivated these heroes. Were their commonalities in how we physicians were all raised that led us on the same path? During medical school, I was intrigued by how such a diverse group of people could …
Read more…
Family principles of COVID-19 heroes
I remember the second I received my first phone call from admissions to a medical school. I was sitting at an airport, after having finished another interview. After putting down the phone, I started to cry. All of those years of hard work had been recognized, and I was finally welcomed into the profession of my dreams. I never thought that I accomplished something less meaningful because it was a …
Read more…
DO and MD: If perceptions matter, which one matters most?
“Code blue!” the overhead speaker blared.
I had just started my shift in the pediatric emergency department. “This will be good for you to see,” the off-service junior resident said to me, as she sprang up from her chair in Pavlovian fashion. With a surge of adrenaline, I blindly followed a group of nurses and physicians towards the trauma case that had just rolled in.
I eventually ended up in a crowded …
Read more…
Trauma: Encountering the past in the present
It was the first day of my third year of medical school. I was assigned to an outpatient OB/GYN clinic. I woke up early, had only a coffee for breakfast that I would later regret, hesitantly wrapped a stethoscope around my neck, unsure if this specialty required such a tool, and punched the address into Google Maps. After almost 16 months of virtual med school, I was walking into uncharted …
Read more…
Medical school is more than practice problems
You are more likely to be struck by lightning than be born with cri du chat syndrome and OCD. The chances of becoming a performer with these diagnoses are even smaller, and yet, what a show Tanner performed.
His performance is meticulously planned out. Pump soap dispenser twice. Rub hands three times. Wash quickly. Create bubble! As the first bubble emerges, the kids take notice.
Pushing her wheelchair forward, Maria pops the …
Read more…
Advocating for people with disabilities: People First Language
I sat hunched over in a coffee shop, staring at anatomy flashcards as they appeared and quickly disappeared on my computer screen. I was in the midst of my first semester of medical school, and I was feeling discouraged and overwhelmed.
My classmates and I had just finished a notoriously difficult block of material (foundations of pathology), and we were onto the cardiovascular system. I dishearteningly clicked through anatomy pictures of …
Read more…
To the lady in the floral dress
As another medical school class graduates in the continued aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, I look back on my own ceremony. I remember the half-empty auditorium, the rows of parents snapping photos on their phones, and the many bored participants counting down the minutes until they could go home and rest after a long four years.
Luckily, the speeches were short, and the pomp and circumstance were not as pompous as …
Read more…
We’re doctors. We signed the book.
Alzheimer’s disease is not the only cause of dementia, but it is the most common. The many other types of dementia, e.g., Lewy body, vascular or frontotemporal, mostly affect older adults. Collectively, dementias are terrible diseases striking at the essence of what makes us human beings. I wonder if dementia, Alzheimer’s disease particularly, is the true Emperor of All Maladies (with all due respect to what is a wonderful book).
The …
Read more…
Aduhelm and how money and politics supersede science
Medical school can strip you of everything you have. As you’re doing everything you can to help others, there can be so many levels of dissatisfaction with your career choice and distress around going through medical training.
But what I found was that there was always my loving family to return to whenever something was going particularly poorly. My family was also always there for my successes, which I found to …
Read more…
5 ways to maintain family bonds in medical school
First off, congratulations to the Class of 2025 for getting into medical school. With the pandemic restrictions lifting, enjoy the next few months doing the things you love because medical school will take an emotional and financial toll on you. According to AAMC, the median debt for medical students in 2019 was $200,000. Unfortunately, fundraising for scholarships was difficult for many organizations due to the pandemic despite more students seeking …
Read more…
8 scholarship tips for medical school
