When I entered college, I wanted to be a chemistry major. I had no idea what college chemistry would be like, but it was the class I loved most in high school and something I was pretty good at. The town I grew up in had little more than 3,000 people and more gas stations than stop lights. My school didn’t have Advanced Placement classes or partnerships with local hospitals …
Love something other than medicine? It’s OK.
My husband and I met during my graduate studies and while he was earning his bachelor’s degree. Two years after getting married, we packed our belongings and moved to a new state where he began medical school. We started our own little family a year later and welcomed an amazing daughter into our lives. After she was born, I made the personal decision to leave my job and stay at …
Waiting on a significant other to finish medical school? Here are some tips.
I write this blog in order to prepare premedical students for the road ahead. I want you to understand common obstacles facing medical students so you can be better prepared to overcome them. Medical training is akin to a roller coaster pulling you through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. On the one hand, medical school is extremely challenging but rest assured, it is very tough to …
5 reasons why medical students drop out
There was more than one tooth missing, maybe three or four from what he could tell. He held one in his scraped hand as I searched for the others, not sure what I would do with them if I found them. My little sister’s bike laid on top of him, a paperweight on his frail frame. Blood pooled in his mouth and dripped onto his shirt when it ran out …
Dr. Leon Pedell discusses how to transition from memorizing physical exam techniques to applying them with real patients to find real abnormalities. Many students have a misconception that they can forget much of what they learned in first and second year as, “low yield.” This is not the case. More than anyone else on a care team, medical students have time to perform thorough physical exams and you …
Transition from memorizing physical exam techniques to real patients
High-stakes standardized testing is an enduring facet of medical education, and the standardized test that is on every medical student’s mind is the USMLE Step 1. The paramount importance of this test for getting into residency creates a demand for high-quality test preparation materials. Established test prep names like Pathoma, Sketchy Medical, First Aid and UWorld fill that demand in a market consisting of more than 40,000 test takers worldwide …
Test prep companies are more powerful than medical school
3 a.m. The alarm blares. Get up, make food, study. Maximize caffeine intake, maximize studying efficiency.
4:12 am. Take the last sip of water, pray. Maximize studying with residual caffeine power.
7 a.m. Get dressed, go to work. Stay awake, stay alert, see patients, present well, regurgitate answers, retain information. Produce saliva, clear dry throat. Study during lunch break. Stay awake, stay alert, see patients, present well, regurgitate answers, retain information.
6 p.m. …
Observing Ramadan as a medical student
Dear future medical student:
It’s graduation week. I’m running into people I haven’t seen in a long time. There are a few things on my mind currently, and in four years, you’ll have the same conversations.
“Did you have so much fun in med school? Did you love it?”
“No.”
“Wow! Those four just FLEW by, didn’t they?”
“No. They absolutely did not.”
“Well just WAIT ‘til you get to residency. THAT was hard. What you …
Medical school is miserable. Here’s the secret to surviving it.
Medical school applications can raise big hairy questions about the long-term potential and trajectory of your relationship as well as the question of whether you get a say in where the applicant applies and attends medical school. For some, the timing of these questions arises in synchrony with the relationship’s natural progression that is at a time when you and your partner are beginning to discuss your long-term prospects. Other …
How can relationships survive medical school applications?
A transcript of the Loyola Stritch School of Medicine 2017 commencement speech, Saturday, May 20, 2017.
Angela Jiang: Good morning! As the class vice president, it is my pleasure to welcome Dr. Pamela Wible to our graduation. Dr. Wible is a family physician and a pioneer in the ideal medical care movement. After completing a family medicine residency and working in different family practices for over ten years, Dr. Wible …
It’s time for graduating medical students to celebrate their dream
Here are some questions that are still on my mind as I approach the tail end of my chief year. I’m thinking about the best ways to offer constructive feedback.
How to give constructive criticism as a physician
It was 5:30 a.m., and I could barely contain my excitement. I was almost done with my clinical rotations.
I had worked tirelessly to improve my medical knowledge and spent hours mastering my clinical skills. Now, as I was nearing the end of my third year of medical school, I felt more than ready for what lay ahead.
I walked into my patient’s room. As she slept, I examined the lines and …
Why nurses are the best teachers for medical students
“OK, it is time to move on,” my professor claps his hands together and yells above the chatter. We all look up from our Netter’s anatomy books and our cadavers. The smell of formaldehyde burns my nose as the fluorescent lights flicker above.
“We have explored the chest cavity and the abdominal cavity. It is now time to move onto the extremities, starting with the arms. I want you to unwrap …
The hands tell us the most about a cadaver
I’ll be honest, when I first matriculated into medical school, I didn’t even know what a USMLE Step exam or clinical clerkship was. In fact, the first time I ever heard of them was from another applicant on the interview trail. I have always been a take-it-one-step-at-a-time type of person, but eventually, I would have to succumb to the pressure and ask upperclassmen about the exam. And what did they …
Should we standardize clerkship grades?
This May, I will graduate from medical school. I will also be part of the first group of medical students to graduate from its new Literature and Medicine track. To me and the other participants, this has been one of the most important components of our medical education. In many ways, it has kept us grounded, serving as a constant reminder that there are experiences different from our own.
We know …
What medical school fails to teach
Dear Dr. Wible,
We’ve talked before. To catch you up, I’m in my clinical years now and I keep waiting to feel the same starry-eyed excitement I felt during the first months of med school, when I thought that becoming a doctor would finally give me a tangible purpose and make me a better person by helping me do right by others in …
“I hate myself. I don’t deserve to be a doctor.”
I’ve been told that one of the hardest things that a physician endures is the passing of her first patient. However, what I imagine to be even more challenging than this is pronouncing the death to the patient’s family for the first time. Although I find myself in a similarly intimidating and burdensome position of addressing the loved ones of our gracious donors tonight, for my first time, I feel …
The hardest thing to do as a physician
Dear Me, MD:
Now that you have opened this letter, you may have graduated or maybe you just matched into residency — somewhere, anywhere, hopefully?! As you read this, it should be some time during spring 2017. But, you never know, sometimes the train derails, and it takes a little longer than expected, so forgive yourself if that is the case. You learned a while back that the fast lane is …
A letter from my med student self to me now
Welcome to planet medicine, where four rides around the sun earns you a golden ticket to study more, to train more, and to enjoy splicing two sacred letters onto the end of your title. The days are long, the weeks go fast, and sleep is optional. In this world, all-star draftees leave their immaculate collegiate careers as masters of memorization and intellectual puzzle solvers only to still be no more …
“Ya mero llegamos?”
Are we almost there? These become one of the most dreaded words I have to hear every weekend, when I pick you up from the long commute that is from Sacramento to the bay area to spend time with you. Oftentimes I am just as inpatient as you my love. This has been our sacrifice these last few years, being physically away from one another. I take a deep …
We made it! An open letter to my son.
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