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 was deeply disappointed to receive the email this week in which I was told that the decision to publish an article I wrote was an error. The editor of the journal, which is PubMed-indexed and respected on an international level, explained that the decision I received was intended for another author. In the days following this news, I have only been able to think about the loss of the …
Read more…
A medical student recognizes burnout early. He’s doing something about it.
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 …
Read more…
Here’s how to help create the future of medicine
With Match Day come and gone, and I cannot help but find myself reflecting upon the journey. The inaugural day of medical school orientation was nearly four years ago now, and it would be entirely cliché to say it feels like it was just yesterday. Rather, the truth is that it honestly feels like a lifetime ago. And yet I still remember the finest details of that day, down to …
Read more…
We are the future of medicine and we are the lucky ones
Just after I started at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, I wrote an article on why I’m doing an MD/MBA. I argued that business school can help clinicians develop a new perspective, acquire important skills and build bridges between doctors, policymakers, and administrators.
I heard from dozens of students, faculty, and physicians who supported the idea of an MD/MBA. However, a question repeatedly came up about as to …
Read more…
How to apply business to 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, …
Read more…
A resident’s guide to being a medical student: In the OR
On Saint Patrick’s Day, my classmates and I will file into a room. Each of us will pick up a small white envelope, and we’ll open them together. Inside those envelopes will be the answer to a question we have wondered for months: Where did I match? Where will I begin my career as an MD, and what kind of doctor will I be? After years of endless studying, hundreds …
Read more…
I’m afraid of public humiliation on Match Day
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 …
Read more…
Doctors don’t often follow their own advice
I stared at the ceiling, my hands twisting the drawstring of my scrubs. It was midnight, and I was occupying one of the on-call rooms of the delivery ward. I was going to be observing my first infant delivery, a milestone in my education that had terrified me since beginning medical school. I had been advised to get some sleep, but I was too anxious. I closed my eyes reviewing …
Read more…
A medical student’s greatest honor
On March 17 at noon, about 18,000 medical students will open envelopes telling them where they will spend the next several years of their lives. It’s residency Match Day, and for many, that letter is one of the most important they will ever receive.
The process is supposed to be straightforward. Medical students, like me, submit applications to hospitals and health systems …
Read more…
How medical students can game Match Day
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 …
Read more…
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 …
Read more…
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 …
Read more…
The truth about Caribbean medical schools
“Management is about coping with complexity. Leadership is about coping with change.”
– John Kotter
Even before the results of the recent presidential election were in, few necessities were as present in our daily lives as the need to cope with constant change. This is true across all facets of personal and professional experience in America, but perhaps nowhere more than in health care. Over the next generation, we need to cope …
Read more…
Medical education needs management training
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 …
Read more…
Does Adderall make you underachieve?
Once upon a time, a princess had decided to go on a long journey.
She had been told about what lay at the end of a long and winding path. It was all of the good things the princess had been wanting; happiness, joy, satisfaction, riches, success, and the ability to cure the sick.
The princess prepared for the trip for many years. She had heard of others who had made the …
Read more…
A medical school fairy tale
“You’re too pretty to be a doctor.”
“When will I see the real doctor?”
“You’re just going to med school to meet a husband right? I’ve heard that’s what girls do.”
If you’re a female medical student or physician, it’s likely that these phrases are not completely unfamiliar to you. Despite it being 2017 — a fact we continue to point out to highlight how far we should have come by now, but …
Read more…
Don’t forget that we’re not just women, we’re doctors
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 …
Read more…
Having a baby during medical school wasn’t such a bad idea
Did you know that several Caribbean medical schools provide postgraduate premed courses so students can complete their science requirements? At least one school’s nearly year-long premed curriculum includes 8 hours per day of classroom work, rudimentary general chemistry and organic labs, and a physics lab with 40-year-old equipment. The fee is more than $30,000 cash, no loans. That’s a lot to pay for courses that are not accredited and credits …
Read more…
Caribbean medical schools: It’s not all palm trees and sunsets
When I first met Jason, I was a third-year medical student halfway through my psychiatry rotation, and he was a newly admitted patient halfway through a nasty comedown from crystal meth.
He sat slumped in his chair scowling with his face hidden by a baseball cap and black hooded sweatshirt and growling responses to my interview questions.
“Why do I have to do this? I hate this crap. I’ve answered these bullshit …
Read more…
My promising patient tormented by disease and drugs
Why do I think it is important to discuss mental wellness in regards to medical school? Because a publication from December 2016 says 27.2 percent of medical students demonstrate depression or depressive symptoms and 11.1 percent indicate suicidal ideation. Because a 2015 publication says 28.8 percent of resident physicians experience depression or depressive symptoms. Most of these people suffer silently. Too afraid to speak up because others might see them …
Read more…
Why it’s important to talk about mental wellness in medical school
