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.
I’ve had lots of practice comforting people. I’ve had to tell patients that their cancer is back in a busy emergency department. I’ve updated family members of patients who are being kept alive by machines in the intensive care unit. I’ve walked alongside patients as they get rolled into an operating room, and crouched down by a patient’s bed as they writhe in pain. There have been moments of fear, …
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What do you say to somebody who knows that they are about to die?
I recently collected anecdotes from women in medicine who have noticed the same thing I’ve noticed: We’re not as comfortable here as our male counterparts. Despite progress, medicine remains a patriarchy — an “old boy’s club” — and the women in this world are frequently reminded of this status quo. In collecting these anecdotes, I’ve noticed two main themes for the type of advice and comments women receive.
The first one speaks …
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20 anecdotes that describe the world of female medical students and physicians
“What’s a DO?” is something virtually every osteopathic medical student and physician have been asked at some point in their training. There is this public misconception that professionals who carry MD after their names are the only qualified people to medically treat their ailments. Any other degree is categorized as “alternative medicine” in their mental schema. Truth be told, DOs, or doctors of osteopathic medicine are just as qualified as …
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The non-difference between MDs and DOs
I asked a colleague at a recent dinner meeting about his children. They’re all grown, he said, one is actually a doctor. But, he added quickly, “I had nothing to do with it.” His son had chosen his father’s field of radiology, though my colleague similarly disavowed any influence. He did mention, with some relief, that his son was happy with his choice.
About a year earlier, I was catching up …
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What is the right reaction for a physician when her daughter goes pre-med?
I pulled into my driveway at 1 in the morning after spending eight consecutive hours in the library. I shut the engine off and allowed the music to continue. And I didn’t move.
And then I started to cry. Initially, I resisted the tears, then conceded to the overpowering emotions so desperate to escape. And for ten minutes, I sat in my dark car in the cold at 1 in the morning …
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Medical students: It is OK to not feel OK
Greetings from the library. I’m writing to you through caffeine jitters, wrapped in a scarf that doubles as a blanket. I’ve marked my territory with my things: several Apple products, remnants of oatmeal in a mason jar, a sketchbook exhibiting my best attempt drawing the inside of a skull, and the most-essential item: my planner, detailing all the tasks I now avoid.
I’m in the midst of my first round of …
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Pass-fail in medical school. But the stress remains.
More than 15 percent of last year’s new crop of first-year medical students completed a post-baccalaureate program. These programs exist in two flavors: one type helps students who want to improve their undergraduate academic record, and the other helps those who want to redirect their careers toward medicine, like me. Both are growing rapidly in number.
With so many future doctors launching …
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What it’s really like in a post-baccalaureate program
The high-pitched wail of the pneumatic saw cutting through the tibia, and the little bits of tissue the blade flung onto the surgeon’s gown were not enough to get to me the first time I saw a surgery, during my senior year in high school. It was the smell. Sliding down the wall in the corner of the operating room, wondering if lunch would stay put, I began to question …
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Did medical school desensitize doctors to debt?
The fall is over, and winter has come, which means I have just wrapped up a busy season of medical school interviews. Most interviews are conducted in a similar fashion with an hour of introduction, speeches by the dean, presentations of facts I already knew from the website, and finally the interviews.
Within the first hour, I understand the reason: “We are the best medical school at (fill in the blank).” …
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The first rule of medical school interviews: Don’t talk about cost
Medical residents take on a variety of responsibilities. Some are clear, upfront, and obvious: the responsibilities they have been training for since entering medical school. Coming up with a treatment plan and carrying it out is first and foremost their raison d’etre, and they put an enormous amount of effort into it. However, they also acquire a host of other duties. They run interference for attendings. They coordinate with nursing. …
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Teaching residents to teach will improve medical education
I was born in Shanghai, China. In September 2000, my parents and I left behind our family and friends, a language and culture dear to our hearts and social and financial stability to immigrate to the United States. I was six at the time. Although I don’t claim to have fully understood the weight of their decision to start a new life, I knew that my parents were making a …
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How being an immigrant shaped the way I treat patients
I distinctly remember the excitement I felt during my first year of medical school when exposed to the breadth of general and specialty fields that seemed all so equally rewarding and medically influential. I envisioned myself holistically understanding my patient, seeing the problem in the context of her other medical issues, her personality, her family and her environment — an approach I considered at the heart of the oath we …
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How to inspire medical students to pursue primary care
“I know you think your organization is patient-centered … but it really isn’t.”
The statement from a rare disease foundation president to a room full of industry partners stung as we observed a candid but cordial exchange about what “patient-centered” has come to mean in today’s health industry world. Everyone knew what they were hearing was right.
Rewind a few days to the CBI Independent Medical Education and Grants Breakthrough Summit, where …
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Medical education must be patient-centered
I was in the midst of my family medicine clinical rotation when my world came crashing down. I had failed my Step 1 boards. I would never be a doctor. It was a nightmare that unfolded over three failed attempts, from which I awoke in a new reality where I was no longer a medical student — and there was absolutely nothing I could do to change that.
I poured everything …
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Picking up the pieces of a broken medical dream
My job as a standardized patient (SP) at several different medical schools means that I spend a lot of time being interviewed and examined by students at every stage of their education. Occasionally, the interview is of such a nature that the SPs are told to dress in a certain “costume” because it signifies to the student that there is something about our cultural representation that affects our medical care. …
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Are cultural sensitivities affecting care?
How important is it for a doctor to want to be a doctor?
At first glance, that question is ludicrous. The path to becoming a practicing physician is so long and tortuous that no one would do it if they didn’t want to. Right? First, there’s the four years of undergraduate education, then four years of medical school, then at least three years of residency. No one has ever suggested that …
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Why do doctors who hate being doctors still practice?
Here it comes — another email about “physician wellness,” advertising mindfulness training, an ice cream social, or a volunteer day. As a psychiatrist, I can attest to the importance of tending to one’s own mental and physical health in order to strive for wellness. However, the trend of implementing physician wellness programs throughout the U.S. is nothing more than putting proverbial lipstick on a pig. Or, stated differently, this may …
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Physician wellness programs are lipstick on a pig
Interview season is upon us, and with the excitement of those dings from ERAS comes twenty tons of added stresses. Being in the new age of lightning speed communication via phones, tablets, laptops, etc., we no longer have use for invitations via snail mail. For obvious reasons, this makes for a much more effective process. However, giving thousands of high-strung Type A applicants the ability to respond to an invite …
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There’s a problem with ERAS
Robots read EKGs. Computers interpret chest X-rays. Algorithms decide which treatment a patient gets.
I asked myself this question this morning, “What job can I do as a doctor that cannot be done by a computer or a robot?” And one of the first things I said to myself was, “Comfort a human.”
But I dwelt on this for a moment and found it’s not quite true. Because computers and robots can …
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The one job robots can never take away from doctors
