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.
Let’s conduct an experiment. Ask a baby boomer, say someone over the age of 60, about the landing on the moon in 1969. You can count on an emphatic response with people recounting the memorable moment when the moment was televised. The reverence, admiration and utmost respect for the NASA’s scientists and astronauts is practically palpable. NASA, considered the pinnacle of scientific innovation at the time, practically glowed with a …
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Who will inspire millennials in health care?
More than two years ago, I wrote about some of the obstacles — as well as the opportunities — that introverted medical students face during training. Now that I have many rotations under my belt, it’s time for an update about my experiences on rotations, along with some helpful advice to newcomers.
The challenges
First, the challenges: Medical school rotations are very fast-paced, and our team members (co-workers and superiors) …
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The challenges and rewards of being an introvert in medicine
As a male medical student, I have developed a growing interest in and enthusiasm for recent efforts to raise awareness about workforce gender disparities in medicine. Though women comprise over 45 percent of resident physicians and 50 percent of medical students in the United States, research reveals deficits in key surrogate measures of successful integration. There are pay and promotion gaps, and women are much less …
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Lifting up women physicians makes us all better
Breathing is different when you know what your lungs look like.
I first realized this during a meditation session at Stanford’s Windhover building. The space — a large, subdivided room — is a self-described sanctuary in the heart of campus. The walls are mostly glass, broken up by long, clay-colored steel beams. Natural light, filtered through the surrounding trees, streams in to illuminate five larger-than-life paintings — a series called “The …
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A meditation in medical school
“Please walk slowly,” cautioned Sunita, my interpreter, as I crept down the stony switchback trail towards the rural Nepali village of Dhulikhel. Sunita, in her petite navy ballet flats, hopped down the rocks as easily as the speckled goats grazing nearby.
Emboldened by her speed, I stepped along eagerly, only to catch my size-ten neon running sneaker on a root and splat face-first into the dust. Looking up, I saw four …
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Here’s how a trip to Nepal stopped this medical student’s depression
It is early on a Saturday morning when I walk out of the elevator of Doan Hall looking for a nursing desk to call the fourth-year anesthesiology resident I am supposed to be shadowing. Instead, I am met with a set of double doors and a staff-only sign.
Before walking through the doors, I decided to read the placard placed on the wall next to them. As I begin to read, …
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Medical students must have this mindset
Brain-computer interface (BCI) has been a topic of interest for several decades, and many discoveries have been made. The role of BCI has been monumental and significantly impactful in the field of medicine. It has been gaining much progress in recent decades with inventions such as the encephalophone, in which a person can create music with their thoughts alone, or a patient can move a cursor icon on a monitor …
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Using brain-computer interface technology in medical education
In the 70s when I trained, we had no add-on curricula; we had no milestones; we had little interference from governing bodies. What we did have were role models.
In the current century, when I talk with students and residents (and I do that very often) they talk about what they see or do not see from their attending physicians and fellow residents. The carefully constructed curricula result from excellent intentions, …
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Why positive role models are essential in medical education
Five years ago today I was at a memorial. Another suicide. Our third doctor in 18 months.
Everyone kept whispering, “Why?”
I was determined to find out.
So I started counting dead doctors. I left the service with a list of 10. Now I have 547.
Immediately, I began writing and speaking about suicide. So many distressed doctors (and med students) wrote and phoned …
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What I’ve learned from 547 doctor suicides
Empathy is a cryptic term. Those in the health care profession can certainly spout off a variety of phrases and metaphors that are typically used to describe the concept of empathy in the educational setting. Throughout my medical education thus far it has been described as “putting yourself in another’s shoes” or “sharing in another’s emotion.”
We are also taught early on what empathy is not. Empathy is not feeling sorry …
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Empathy is better felt than defined
Born in 1920, Henrietta Lacks lived in Virginia and Maryland, worked as a tobacco farmer, and mothered five children. At age 31, her life was unfortunately cut short by cervical cancer. Since her death, she has helped catalyze numerous biomedical discoveries.
Upon treatment at Johns Hopkins, Henrietta’s physician obtained a tumor sample. To his amazement, her cells survived and divided in a petri dish. Today, her cells are still used in …
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Think of the person behind the cells: the motivations of biomedical research
Congratulations! At this point, you are almost halfway done with your first year of medical school. Either you have finally figured out what’s going on, or if you’re like me, you are still trying to figure it out. Relax, take a few deep breaths. Medical school is unlike anything you have ever done. The volume of information, constant testing, and overwhelming need to keep up with your peers is an …
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A letter to my sister (and all other first-year medical students)
“I lift things up and put them down.”
This quote is from a commercial for Planet Fitness I have seen in the past. It portrays a bulky body builder on a tour of the gym premises. There is no real communication with the tour guide since he keeps saying that he lifts things up and puts them down, irrespective of what the tour …
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The medical student who had a genuine human profile
Our powerful subconscious minds are processing information that we don’t even realize we are taking in, so to achieve gender equity we must actively uncover things that are unintentionally promoting stereotypes.
For example, we know that if we want to promote a gender equitable environment that putting portraits of men on the walls of the classrooms would not be ideal. Even if there were one or two women in the mix, …
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Do the portraits hanging in medical schools hurt women and minorities?
On TV shows, therapists decorate their rooms with leather lounge chairs, throw pillows and organza curtains that let in the light.
But Dr. Hassan’s office is in the clinic basement. The fluorescent lighting is sterile. She has a gray metal desk — I think every doctor I’ve shadowed as a medical student has had that same desk.
But I’m not here as a student.
I’ve been anticipating this appointment for a month. In …
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A medical student in therapy
Whether we are aware of it or just letting it happen in the background, every day we are teachers, and we are learners. In the realm of academic medicine, the roles and relationships are obvious. Attendings teach residents, residents teach medical students. Medical students teach each other, and to a great degree, they must teach themselves. Regardless of our chosen field of medicine, our patients depend on us daily for …
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Listen to your medical students and individualize their lessons
Traditionally, many medical students use the proverbial “last summer of their lives” to conduct basic/clinical research, shadow or go abroad. If you want to be a leader in health care or are simply unsure of what to do over the summer, you should try something more exotic and unexpected — work in finance or industry.
Wall Street, big pharma and private insurers have long been the moral punching bags of clinicians …
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Want to change medicine? Work in finance.
I’m three weeks into my second year of medical school, and my classmates and I are sharing feelings of being “old” compared to the first years on campus, who are “bright-eyed eyed and bushy-tailed” — not yet jaded by med school bureaucracy, and (rightfully) excited by all the opportunities that lie ahead of them. I’ve also heard a few of them use an often-judgmental term that has always confused me: …
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In medical school, not all gunners are created equal
A few weeks ago, my program hosted a lecture series that focused on patient safety. One lecturer truly caught my attention. He chose to highlight the fact that medical professionals have been trained since medical school that perfection, as a practicing physician, is necessary. We have been held to high expectations during our training, and we hold ourselves to these impossible standards as we continue our courses in residency and, …
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Dismiss the ideal of perfection
