The gall, you might think to yourself as you click on this link in disgust.
Before you write that brutal retort which I may/may not deserve, some simple disclaimers before we tackle this subject:
Being a single mother in medical school and residency isn’t a piece of cake. But, being a single parent in this world isn’t a piece of cake, either, and being a medical student and / or resident isn’t a piece of cake. Foregoing medical school isn’t necessarily the answer to any of that.
Here is some general advice I will share with parents, single or otherwise, who are facing decisions about …
My mom wrote me the following letter during my first semester in medical school. She has been a patient, and a mother/wife/sister/daughter of patients. She has been around countless doctors. Here is her take on what makes a great one.
Dear Son,
I am so very proud that you are becoming a physician and that you chose this profession, not for the prestige or the financial advantages, but because you want to …
“Sometimes, how you feel at the end of an interview can be clinically revealing,” my preceptor says. “How does this patient make you feel?”
***
“Mr. M?” I ask gently, knocking on the hospital room door. “May I come in?”
“Hello? Hello?”
I enter at what I think is an invitation to me, but see that 79-year-old Mr. M is speaking into the phone instead.
“I’m sorry, I can come back…” I start to say. …
“You’re not sorry.”
Within two days two different patients said this to me, each with hatred in his voice. Each time I was alone, each time I had known the patient for only a few minutes, and each time the rage was directed at me and only me.
For seven months, I had avoided being the bad guy. When a patient got upset, he accused my superiors, and I hid behind their …
“I love the hours.”
“I want to be just like Dr. Smith. He has a sweet practice.”“I want to make a ton of money.”
“I want to make a ton of money.”
These are some bad reasons why medical students choose a specialty. Most medical students decide what specialty to pursue when they are in their mid to late 20s. While we all think …
After a week of medical school orientation, followed by two weeks in the classroom studying cellular organelles and biochemical pathways, our class was finally going to start the centuries-old rite of passage that is human gross anatomy. For many students, it will be first time seeing a dead body. The anatomy lab is where future surgeons will make their first cut with a scalpel, without the pressure of life and …
“Dr. Fisher, can you teach our residents EKG lecture series?”
Naively, I said “Sure!”
What I didn’t realize is how hard this is to do today.
Much of this is not residents’ fault. They only have so many hours in so many days to attend lectures while caring for patients. Thanks to residency work-hour restrictions, those hours have become even fewer. To make matters much worse, through the year residents are torn to …
Whether you’re starting medical school or beginning your second year, this post is for you. Will probably work just as well for PAs, NPs and any other health professional student who hasn’t started clinical rotations.
Our former babysitter just graduated from medical school and the WhiteCoats are just as proud as her parents are. Then I started thinking, what advice would I give to students starting medical school?
Our first day of …
Across the country, newly minted doctors have started their internships. The first night on call there won’t be an intern – anywhere in the country – who will sleep. Every new intern is absolutely convinced that the beeper is going to go off and they won’t know what to do. (You get over this by about the 2nd or 3rd call night, by the way).
Graduating from medical school …
One of the most intense moments of my third-year of medical school was during my internal medicine clerkship when a code blue was called.
It was our responsibility as medical students on the inpatient service to report to every code blue while we were on our calls every 4th night. This time was no different, and my call partner and I ran to the code. When we arrived, I recognized the …
“What about combined psychiatry-family medicine-neurology-internal medicine programs? Should I try to do a triple board program in psychiatry-child psychiatry and pediatrics?”
Every April, I field such questions from a slew of rising fourth year students who have become, to their surprise (and sometimes dismay), passionately interested in psychiatry. Psychiatry is a shortage specialty and psychiatric issues rank high among the challenges facing medical care systems here and around the world. For …
One of the most memorable discussions regarding the cost of care was at 4:45AM during surgical morning rounds.
As usual, the interns would present the overnight events of their patients to the chief resident and a plan for the day would be agreed upon. These morning rounds were particularly intense: in addition to the 30 patients that an intern had to manage solo over night, the brutal hours that the surgical …
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“Um—Hi there, I’m a, uh, you know. Medical student. First year. For, you know, the Patient-Doctor—err, Patient-Physician course—”
The nurse smiled and turned to a woman of shorter stature with bony, scrunched- up shoulders. “Mary, do you want this first year to interview you?”
Mary was about to set foot in the lounge when she heard this. She let out a sigh and faced me. Her eyes looked worn; I could tell …
I have been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about all the many ways that the experience of medical school has changed me.
The most obvious is knowledge. I’ve drunk from the proverbial “firehose” of information that we experience in medical school, and apparently enough of the facts stuck with me to pass all my exams, and secure myself a residency program back in my home state of California. …
The lines of text on my laptop screen blurred together as I lost focus. I knew there was at least one error on my medical school re-application I would regret later on. My eyes scanned the familiar body of words but failed to connect the information to my brain. Frustrated, I closed the application and shut my computer off.
My bedroom door abruptly swung open, revealing my mother with the phone …
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The end of my residency and beginning of my practice was the most wrenching experience of my life. I was woefully prepared for the transition. Full disclaimer: I was trained many years ago when residencies were acknowledged brutal demeaning processes. Things have changed considerably, but the psychological passage I endured still holds.
I think my process of becoming a surgeon was fairly typical, with the exception that there was no one …
March 29, 2012
Calhoun Lecture Series
Strom Thurmond Institute, Clemson University
Thank you for the invitation to speak tonight. I’m very humbled to stand before you. And what a delight to speak to people who are neither bleeding, intoxicated nor asking for Percocet! And in a setting where no one will burst through the back door on a stretcher!
As you know, I’m an emergency physician …
If you are a second-year medical student, there is one thing on your mind at this time of year: Step 1. Although scary, there are things that you can do to help calm your anxiety and get your best score.
Set a goal
In my opinion, before you start really preparing for Step 1, you should have two things clearly in mind: where you are with your score and where you want …
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I eyed my chat screen with a good amount of suspicion. A friend of a friend who I had rarely spoken to had initiated a chat conversation with me with the opening line “How are medical school apps going?” The cursor blinked in anticipation.
I began to think about possible ulterior motives that she, another pre-medical student, could have had. Perhaps she just wanted to use me as a comparison for …
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