“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.
As graduation nears, I recall an away rotation that concerns me for the future of medicine. I remember eagerly boarding my plane, ready to work hard, learn as much as possible, and explore the unknown. My first day in clinic, I was excited to befriend the student I would rotate with. After seeing our first patient together, she asked me to share my clinical reasoning for the case. I happily …
The gunner culture hurts the future of medicine
I was sitting on hold in the resident room gearing up to beg the IT person that would soon come on the other line for enough authorization to be able to view the residents’ patient problem list, and I found myself thinking about what some of the old docs must think of us third-year students now. Talk to some of these older physicians and they’ll tell you their stories of …
The infantilization of medical students
Like many of my peers, I started medical school with idealistic dreams of providing compassionate care for poor patients. I thought being a physician was a noble profession and even discussing money, much less changing my career choices based on it seemed antithetical to that. A visit to the financial aid office quickly cured me of my naiveté. I was facing over $300,000 in debt and would be forgoing millions of …
Why this medical student joined the National Health Service Corps
Match Day results were announced recently and a record high 35,969 medical students learned the location and specialty of their first job. As these newly indoctrinated physicians chart their next steps, the majority will opt out of academia, creating a potential crisis in medicine and healthcare innovation.
Although 45 percent of graduating medical students aspire to work in an academic setting, only about 16 percent will do so. Of those who do …
Why we need more doctors opting for academic medicine
On July 1st, 2017, the updated Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Common Program Requirements will take effect. The increase in the maximum continuous work hour shift from 16 to 24 hours has surely received the most attention, and will likely continue to do so.
However, the ACGME did make some significant improvements in this latest guideline update worth noting. Among them was a slight conjunctional switch from an “and/or” …
The little-known ACGME guideline change every resident should know
As the millennial presence in health care becomes more prominent, the climate of the health care system will inevitably change. Speaking from a personal perspective, there is a growing emphasis on lifestyle in the conversation of career choice. Medicine is becoming less and less of a life, and more of a part of life, a part of the work-life balance. We (millennials) also place emphasis on impact. We want to …
Here’s how to help create the future of medicine
As a medical student, I had nightmares about my first day in the OR: scrubbing incorrectly, contaminating a sterile field, forgetting the anatomy I had so carefully studied the night before. It seemed like the only thing I could do in that artificially lit room was mess up. After a few cases I came to love the routine and ceremony of each surgery: the timeout; the rhythmic pattern of suture, …
A resident’s guide to being a medical student: In the OR
If you were to sit in on any routine doctors visit, you are bound to hear a few things repeatedly.
“Do you smoke? How much alcohol do you drink, if any? What is your diet like? How much exercise do you get weekly?”
These are questions we are trained to ask as early as the first week of medical school. We are taught to treat not just the conditions a patient presents …
Doctors don’t often follow their own advice
Debt is destroying the lives of doctors everywhere. The cost of getting an education has moved into the ridiculous range. Many doctors are now starting their practice so far in the hole, that they do not see the way out.
I would not have been able to start on my debt-free journey (I peaked at more than $600,000) if I had not developed a new attitude toward debt. Putting debt into …
Debt should have an ICD-10 code
The year was 1976. I was graduating from a small branch of my state university with a bachelor’s in chemistry when I first applied to medical school. I was living at home and paying my own tuition. There were no physicians in my family, but I became interested in medicine after I was impressed with a surgeon who had operated on my shoulder. I had a better-than-the-medical-school-acceptance-rate average on my …
I’m retired, but I’m disgusted with medical schools. Here’s why.
Dear Dr. Wible,
I want to fill you in on what really goes on behind the scenes at my medical school and maybe you can help inform other students about what happens here before they make a huge mistake. If students slip through the cracks of a U.S. medical school, then international med schools in the Caribbean may be the next choice. Some have better residency match rates than others so …
The truth about Caribbean medical schools
It’s rare for medical students nowadays to go through training without knowing someone who uses prescription stimulants to study. The ever-popular Adderall and Concerta seem to be omnipresent on college campuses and medical schools, while prescriptions for these medications are suspiciously less common. In environments where success and self-worth are often based on academic achievement, the temptation to succumb to using these pills is high.
The temptation is even higher as …
Does Adderall make you underachieve?
My stomach had been in knots that morning.
“Are you pregnant?” my classmate laughed after I returned to the gross anatomy lab for the second time after leaving for fresh air.
“No,” I spat, dissection through fat and fascia, teasing out muscles from nerves.
But, I wondered.
After lab, I bought a pregnancy test. I began medical school in my late 20s, already having discussed with my husband appropriate times to start a family during …
Having a baby during medical school wasn’t such a bad idea
One of the most respected and skilled clinician-educators — of course, he is an infectious diseases specialist — at our institute came into my office, sat down and immediately starting eating pretzels. “Let me know what you think about this,” he said between bites. He went on to recapitulate a recent interaction he had with the members of the internal medicine team (medical students, house staff and the attending physician) …
Are you asking students questions or “pimping?”
Dear future colleague,
What a tremendous thing it is to know you are becoming a physician! You are devoting your life and talents to the betterment of the health of your future patients, your local community, and our entire society. You have responded to the call to serve in a profession that is hundreds of years old, steeped in tradition but vehemently progressive, always changing, and vowing to remain abreast of …
A young black physician’s letter to future black doctors
Slave, I am not
Servant, I may be
Arrogant, I am not
Ignorant, I may be
Un-engaged, I am not
However, Quiet, I may be.
Your coat is long, mine short
Your knowledge mile deep, mine mile wide
You have seen 100 patients this week, I have seen 10
You trained for 10 years, this is my first
If I look scared, it’s because I am
If I seem intimidated, I indeed am
If I appear confused, I in fact am
If I …
I demand you consider us humans: A medical student poem
Well, I’m officially that old, bitter resident. I had to walk uphill to medical school 10 miles there and back. “In my day,” medical school was fail, pass, high pass, or honors. I recently found out that the medical school I graduated from has changed the first two years of basic science courses to simply pass/fail (while retaining the honors/high pass grades in clinical rotations). I am so annoyed! Why …
A medical school goes pass-fail: Why this change must happen everywhere
You submitted your application in July. You completed all of your secondary essays by mid-September. Other than one interview that resulted in a waitlist decision you’ve heard nothing but radio silence. What can you do?
Whenever I work with medical school applicants I emphasize that the application process is ongoing because the admissions process is fluid. It is not as if you submit your primary application and secondary essays and the …
Medical school applicants: Waitlisted? Want more interviews? Here’s what you can do.
We need to fail more tests in medical school. I’m serious.
In first year, our class had two of the most memorable weeks of our schooling: A crash course on biochemistry taught by a professor who is widely accepted as one of the best teachers in our medical school. His in-class lecture style kept students engaged and entertained; I, and many of my classmates, learned tremendous amounts of his material and …
Medical students need to fail more often. Here’s why.
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