As I finished my 24-hour call recently, I was reminded of a 2009 study revealing a decline in empathy as medical students transition from their mostly-didactic second year to third year, which is essentially an apprenticeship in the hospital with lecture as an afterthought. I began my third year with what most would argue is the most difficult rotation, surgery, and my experiences over …
For the first time since I have been in medical training, I got sick.
Not just the kind of sick where its a cold, or you know that its stress, but the kind of sick that does not go away and randomly comes up just to make you mad when you just want to have fun (like …
I recently had quite a long conversation with a college senior that was just accepted into medical school for this coming fall.
As a rising fourth year medical student myself, I would like to think that I have navigated the waters of academia and figured out both efficient paths to success and avoidance of roadblocks and setbacks. …
Here’s some advice to think about before starting clinical rotations during the third year of medical school.
Don’t sit in the back of the plane
The basic sciences are important to learn the vocabulary and grammar of medicine. Clinical rotations are different – it’s where you actually learn to be a physician. If you use the analogy of learning to fly, …
Armed with tools I have never used or seen before I entered a physical exam practice room for the first day of learning.
Having finished history-taking practices last semester, we were now beginning a new chapter, learning to take a head-to-toe physical exam. Before class began, we were told to read a book and …
On May 15, 2011, 147 students embarked on their careers as doctors as they graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
One student, Jenny Rowland, who will pursue a career in Radiology and continue her training at Penn, shared her personal thoughts and emotions as she prepared to graduate.
by Jenny Rowland, MD
I’m not a typical PennMed student.
I’m 31 years old, and I …
I recently had the opportunity to go to the anatomy lab and help the first years go through the pelvic anatomy. What a blast! There is nothing like dissecting a cadaver to tune up one’s surgical anatomy skills, and helping young eager medical students through it is a great experience.
Prior to going into the lab, I spent many hours going through Netter’s atlas to brush up on the anatomy so …
Becoming a doctor is a long and arduous process. Between taking pre-med courses, taking the MCAT, applying to medical schools, matriculating, then taking test after test after test until you take the big one (USMLE Step 1) before which you did questions all day long for weeks from a good USMLE question bank …
An excerpt from This Won’t Hurt A Bit (and other white lies): My Education in Medicine and Motherhood. Copyright © 2011 by Michelle Au. Published by Grand Central Publishing.
Let’s look at this first purely from the perspective of personal investment and expectation. To practice medicine, …
When applying to medical school, the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) asks aspiring physicians if they would like to be considered “disadvantaged” applicants or not.
Many premedical students find themselves troubled by this question and wonder, what does it mean to be disadvantaged? How does being a disadvantaged applicant affect my medical school application? According to the information American Association of …
Recently, I received a call from the son of some old friends. This 30-year-old man has been an elementary schoolteacher for the past few years and recently decided that he would like to go to medical school and eventually become a surgeon. He wanted to know what I thought of the idea.
Suppressing the urge to tell him not to even consider …
I was talking to a young man who is starting medical school this fall. His tuition at one of South Carolina’s newer schools will be $40,000 per year. That’s admittedly on the high end. On the low end, it runs a paltry $33,000 per year.
And this is all after college, of course. He and others like him are taking out loans to the tune of $240,000 to pay for their …
Should medical students receive immunity from malpractice liability?
That’s an interesting question that’s raised in a bill from Arizona.
According to the Arizona Daily Sun,
State lawmakers are moving to keep patients injured by medical students from being able to sue them.
But proponents said that won’t leave victims without recourse.
SB1429, awaiting full Senate action, would spell out that students are not liable for malpractice if they are under the supervision of a …
This semester is coming to an end and we are almost halfway done with first year. I say semester, but technically we use the block system. What’s the block system? Here, it refers to dividing the academic school year into single subject blocks. Instead of taking concurrent, year-long courses, we spend several weeks on one course. For instance, we started off with 5 weeks of only biochemistry, then 8 weeks …
I just finished another inpatient service stretch at our community hospital with some great cases and lots of good medicine. While attending rounds may have changed a lot in the last 40 years as highlighted in a recent Annals of Internal Medicine article, some things have not changed – the focus on medical student presentations during attending rounds.
Students spend hours through their call nights preparing for …
What makes your doctor’s education unique from that of other health care providers?
Recently, I was sitting in on a lecture by one of my favorite physician-teachers (certainly my favorite neurologist). I’ll call him Dr. Deeds (for his resemblance to a character from the movie, Mr. Deeds). He was giving a sort of broad, generalized lecture to prepare us for a series of lectures on neurodegenerative diseases …
They say you never forget your first “real” patient. Mine was a woman who didn’t need a pelvic exam, but who got one anyway.
Next door, minutes later, my second patient provided another personal first: a male genital and rectal exam, also, without need. Medical students like me begin training by practicing the basics on one another–listening to heart sounds, and looking into each other’s ears and eyes—but eventually, every clinician-in-training must lay …
We were taught in grammar school that plagiarism is wrong. It is stealing someone else’s property.
Imagine in high school asking your mother to buy you “Cliff Notes” so you can copy it word for word. Mother would not have liked that, and it wouldn’t have been right.
To write an essay today, you’ll probably start with a search engine. Instantly, Mr. Google delivers many intelligent commentaries on anything, probably better than …
by Nicholas J. Rohrhoff
Each generation of physicians has no choice but to take on the responsibility of learning the science of medicine – how best to care for patients. But current circumstances dictate that we must also bear the burden of developing policy that creates the best system in which to provide that care.
Creation of a 21st century American healthcare system will require engagement and …
The following is a brief list of some of the things I think have been useful and worth their money in my first two years of med school:
1. Large, widescreen computer monitor. The volume of information required to internalize during the preclinical years of medical school can’t be compiled and organized on paper. You would end up with bookshelves filled with those gigantic 4″ binders. Therefore, almost everything happens on …
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