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.
My “aha” moment wouldn’t come at the signing of my leave of absence contract. Nor would it awaken me at night with the chair-gripping dizziness I had come to expect.
When the vertigo started in early December during my third block of clerkship, I chalked the symptoms up to stress.
Over the December break, I met with my family doctor and casually recounted my symptoms. The vertigo had worsened, and seemed questionably …
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A medical student’s accidental internship in empathy
Hi Pamela,
I’m a medical student in the UK. Though I’ve only been in med school since September, it has already taken its toll on me. Before I started, I was so in touch with my emotions, spirituality, and nature. Now I feel so empty and desensitized. I hate that when faced with the horrible circumstances of another person, I just don’t feel …
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Medical school has killed my soul. What can I do?
This question has been circulating in the academic medical world for years. As an intern and resident, I would hear complaints about how “unready” they seemed. The grievances often include adjectives like ill-prepared, lazy, or uninterested. The complaints have burgeoned over time, and the examples are numerous in my institution: Students show up late to rounds with coffee in their hands; one med student had the gall to go directly to the attending and …
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What is wrong with medical students today?
Sometimes, it’s difficult to recall that single defining moment or person that sends you on the path you’re meant to take in life. I was fortunate in that I found that experience halfway through my undergraduate career at the University of California, Davis. I had recently lost my grandmother; although I’d wanted to help, all I’d been able to do at the hospital was translate for her. That overwhelming sense …
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From volunteer to family physician: A medical student’s journey
During my first year of medical school, I attended a “speed dating” event, where medical students met attendings from various specialties to get a better sense of what we could do with our lives once we graduated. Older physicians consistently remarked that they decided their future during their intern year. One even said that he waited until the end of his internship to decide on otolaryngology.
I, along with my fellow …
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Why the Flexner model is outdated for today’s medical schools
I’m not sure when it happened, but driving into the parking lot that cold winter day, I knew it had. Tears welled in red eyes, snot dripped out of my nose. I felt so alone and lost. My whole life I’d wanted this — the drive to the hospital and wondering whether I would change a life. But as I sat in my car, engine off, I didn’t want that …
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If this medical student was a test question, the answer would be depression
1. I applied to medical school so that I could become a doctor and provide care for patients. I care about people. I am eager to be part of the health care community. I believe that most, if not all, physicians feel the same way. Physicians are also human and flawed and fallible. Everyone, including physicians, have off days and make mistakes and run late. What you may not know …
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8 surprising things patients may not know about. But they should.
Today I have a practical exam; that means doctors are shadowing me. It’s my turn to talk with patients about their diagnoses, and I’ve been looking forward to that part of medicine.
It’s my second patient; she’s here for vaginal discharge. I go in, introduce myself and explain my role. I’m still mediocre at documentation, but I’m good at putting patients at ease, so we make small talk. She just moved …
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A medical student encounter turns into something much more
A few years ago, the hospital where I work started new residency programs in internal medicine and family practice. Many of the residents do rotations in anesthesiology and surgery where I have an opportunity to meet and talk with them. They are eager to learn medicine of course, but they are also interested in the perspective that many of us who have been practicing medicine for many years have to …
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New doctors should listen to this advice if they want to last
Every fall, medical schools welcome nearly 20,000 college graduates. They arrive anticipating endless hours of lectures, too much coffee, and infinite facts to memorize. There is one thing they do not expect, however. I know. Forty-nine years ago, I was one of them.
The first day I walked onto the wards was in spring of 1967. I was in St. Louis, doing my second year of medical school. Previously my presence …
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A routine heart exam. An unexpected problem.
I burned out for the first time in my life about three months after starting medical school. The surprising thing was that nothing out of the ordinary happened, I was doing exactly what they told me to do, pre-reading from lecture notes and recommended textbooks, going to lectures and labs, and trying to study and review what I learned that day in the library.
The problem was, that after a 45-minute …
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From burnout to balance: How this medical student did it
“… slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”
This quote, borrowed in part from poet and pilot John Gillespie McGee, Jr., was used by President Ronald Reagan to honor the seven astronauts killed in the Challenger shuttle explosion. I was in the 6th grade when I first heard this phrase. In a tiny schoolroom in remote West Texas, President Reagan’s speech was broadcast and replayed over the …
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Why I joined the battle as a physician
It was a concept intimately familiar to me long before anyone gave it a name. From my earliest days in college, I felt surrounded by people who packed their days with meetings, activities, sports practices or competitions; classes, study groups, and research; for whom every moment had been spoken for and each day didn’t so much end as spill over into the next. The standard was clear: to do any …
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Time macho: Why I’m part of the problem
“Let’s say a Chinese patient comes into labor and delivery … simply logs onto the CultureVision website. Next, click on the Chinese section and finally click ‘Labor, Birth and Aftercare.’ Just that quickly you have the information you are looking for.”
CultureVision boasts that it is the “first comprehensive, user-friendly database that gives health care professionals access to culturally competent care.” The website’s automatic slideshow, entitled “Did you Know?” shifts …
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The problem with cultural competency in medical education
Though I am two years into my residency, I still experience flashbacks to my time as a medical student on the wards. The adrenaline of arriving at the hospital 2 hours before rounds, scrambling to see my patients, constructing a note that no one would ever look at, and preparing a hastily-constructed presentation to deliver in a half-performance, half-examination outside of our patient’s room.
I remember being the object of a …
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A resident’s guide to being a medical student
It is February of our last few months of clinical rotations. I am a rising fourth-year medical student at a well-known East Coast institution with a not-so-bad track record, I guess you could say. I scored in the top percentile for the USMLE Step 1, honored my third-year rotations, and have comments from attendings about how I am destined to succeed in this career. One might think that at this point …
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A star medical student feels like he made a terrible decision
Over the past eight months, I’ve rotated at the Palo Alto VA, Santa Clara Kaiser, Stanford outpatient family medicine, and pediatrics clinics, and most recently, at Santa Clara Valley. At the VA and Kaiser, all my patients spoke English. Occasionally, at Stanford’s outpatient sites, our patients spoke a language other than English; however, this never felt like a barrier to care because Stanford had phone interpreters available, as well as …
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Should medical school have a language requirement?
One of my favorite shows to watch as a kid was Bill Nye the Science Guy. I fondly recall being glued to the television as Bill enthusiastically explained the mysterious wonders of the universe with all of his props, gizmos, and gadgets. Unlike science teachers at school, whose seemingly endless lectures bored me, Bill Nye’s hands-on, interactive approach held my attention. He simplified complex science concepts so well that even …
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How filmmaking made me a better science communicator
There comes a time in most people’s training when adversity threatens to become overwhelming and swallow them whole. It could be as a medical student, while spending countless hours in the library or when on demanding rotations.
Or, it could be during residency, from the 80-hour work weeks or the stressful patient care situations. It might even happen well into training, when the weekly grind just becomes too much. Burnout, generally …
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This doctor never gave up. And look where he is today.
