With my third year of medical school coming to a close, here is what I wish I did differently, wish I knew beforehand or figured out along the way during my core clinical rotations. It’s nothing groundbreaking, and you may have heard this before, but it can’t hurt to hear it from someone else.
Hold yourself accountable for the welfare of your …
After third year: What a medical student wishes he did differently
I recently gave two talks at my residency program, one on health care innovation and another on intimate partner violence. I know little about each topic, but my goal as presenter was merely to know more than each person in the room. To require residents to give talks as newly-minted “experts” on topics creates a paradox of generating both anxiety and …
Our feedback model is broken. Here’s how to change it.
When I began volunteering during my first year of medical school at our student-run free clinic, I noticed that I felt stressed out in the chaotic environment, from the director’s tough questions and the long wait times to present to an attending. My muscles tight, I would feel exhausted after leaving the clinic. I knew, even at that time, it was …
Why medical students need to take care of themselves during training
I just stepped out of the administrative building at medical school and hear a big commotion. I look over and see an elderly male slouched on the ground bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose. Blood is soaking the front of his collared shirt and pooling on the ground. Bystanders are making a scene and not sure what to do.
I drop the items I’m carrying and calmly approach the man and …
Sucker punched and bleeding. Do you know how you’ll respond?
I didn’t really notice him standing in line. But how could I? Hundreds of kids came through the high school gym yesterday. His turn for the heart and lung portion of the high school sports physical had come. He said he was going to play baseball and basketball. How could he with that arm he carried so carefully? I am not …
A high school physical that shook this student to the core
I keep getting served a Facebook ad from the American Association of Medical Colleges imploring me to ask politicians to fund residency training for medical school graduates. The link leads to a webpage with neat graphics and a series of well-designed cartoons dramatizing an ominous shortage of 90,000 doctors expected to occur by 2025.
Now, the notion of “doctor shortage” by itself is meaningless. Doctors — …
Want to become a doctor? Ask yourself the following questions.
I was volunteering at one of the free clinics associated with my medical school last weekend, and while teaching a medical student how to sew a cut, he queried, “That is an interesting technique, who taught you how to suture? Are you a surgeon?”
“I am actually a radiologist,” I replied. “To answer your first question, I was actually taught this by an obstetrician during my third year of medical school.”
Puzzled, …
What this radiologist learned from his obstetrics rotation
A response to “You’re a medical student. And it’s so obvious why.”
We don’t even have to ask, and we can tell by the bags under your eyes.
It’s so obvious that you are a medical student.
References in every pocket of your short white coat, pulling down on your shoulders until you hunch over. You force yourself to stand up straight …
This is how I know you’re a medical student
During my family medicine rotation, my very first clinical clerkship of medical school, I was assigned to make a home visit to one of my preceptor’s patients—a man I will call Mr. Jones.
Mr. Jones had congestive heart failure, COPD, and a barrage of other chronic health problems. He was a pleasant gentleman but had a low level of health literacy and had been doing a poor job of taking his …
Educating community health conscious physicians
There he stood at our beach party, the family doctor I grew up admiring. I timidly approached his circle of friends to announce I had gotten into medical school and would start in the fall. He stopped to attention. His friends stood watching. I couldn’t conceal my smile. I thought, “He is going to be so excited for me!”
“Get out now.” …
Leaving medical school for a startup. And with no regrets.
“Write your name on the paper,” he said. Since he was a senior who’d just gotten into medical school, and I was a simple sophomore who’d chosen to attend the session, I did. “Now write Dr. in front of it.” I complied. “If you’re reading that and you don’t feel anything, medicine isn’t for you,” he said. I looked at it again, my name with a Dr. in front of …
I’ve been becoming a doctor for a long time now
As a freshman in college, I helped my aunt with her obstetric appointments to try and see what it meant to be an obstetrician. After her delivery, I asked her OB about her college majors, and she told me she majored in history. The next week, I signed up to start my history minor.
Was that mentorship? No. Granted, having a liberal arts background has been extremely helpful in my medical …
The importance of having mentors in medicine
In just under two months, I will be making two big transitions as I begin life as a resident. The first and obvious change is from student to doctor. The second doesn’t get the same spotlight, but might be just as important: from student to teacher.
Residents play a vital role in medical student teaching. With medical training like an apprenticeship, it is the residents with whom third-year medical students often …
The transition from medical student to teacher
ADVERTISEMENT
When we got an NIH grant last year to ascertain how teens could get their peers interested in research careers, we did not anticipate turning to Jimmy Kimmel for inspiration.
Kimmel’s “Lie Witness News” segment is notorious for asking unsuspecting pedestrians to share their opinions about ridiculous topics from a new “scented” iPhone to the “appointment” of Judge Judy to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the interviews are purely for amusement, …
Making research careers sound cool, Jimmy Kimmel-style
“It’s good to see you brother!”
I had never met this man, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. With a large smile on his face and a look of pride, he extended his arm to give me a handshake. “There aren’t too many of us doing what you do. I’m glad we got some representation in here.” I am a black man in the medical field. When I …
Where the brothers at? Why aren’t they in medicine?
There she lay: a 59-year old woman who had become increasingly disoriented and confused. Not only did she have an infection in her bloodstream, years of alcohol abuse had taken its toll on her liver, leaving her skin yellowed.
“Welcome to the ICU,” I thought. In contrast to my previous clinical experience, I found this patient encounter unsettling.
No conversation.
No personality.
No interaction.
She was nothing more than a body in a bed punctured …
A medical student, molded by experiences with patients
We don’t even have to ask, and you certainly don’t need to get out your credentials.
It’s so obvious that you are a medical student.
And it’s not just the short white coat and student identification badge half-hidden in your linen pocket that says it all.
We’ve seen you at all hours around the hospital during your clinical rotations. You tend to appear a half-hour before everyone else, just in time to commandeer …
You’re a medical student. And it’s so obvious why.
While reading the book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg, I was mesmerized by her insight about the self-perpetuating difficulties women face during their careers; however, something was missing.
Mrs. Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, wrote an enlightening novel about the differences in mindset between the genders and how this hinders women in their career. I found that she was spot on with my experience as a woman pursuing medicine. Like Mrs. …
As an under-represented medical professional: Lean in
Every year roughly 400 physicians take their lives: a group of physicians greater than the size of two graduating classes at my medical school. Let’s be clear, physician suicide and medical professional mental health awareness is a neglected issue in medicine. We are twice as likely to commit suicide than our non-physician counterparts. Women physicians are up to three times …
Mental health for medical professionals deserves more attention
If the analogy between medical training and a fraternity is true, then medical students are the pledges.
For many, the most grueling part of this pledge process is the third year surgery rotation where the modified Murphy’s Law is applicable almost daily: Anything a medical student can do wrong, a medical student will do wrong.
In a fraternity, pledges can do no right. …
How Murphy’s law applies to medical students
Get free updates delivered free to your inbox.
