In an ad-hoc poll among classmates, I recently inquired about the most important date (in 2013) to a 2nd year medical student. The overwhelming majority cited their respective USMLE Step 1 exam dates as most important, followed closely by the season finales of ABC’s Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy. While the top three responses all are worth their respective weights, the one date that should bear the most gravity in the minds …
As a third-year med student, I was doing an ER shift when the call came through our dispatch: 56-year-old man, status epilepticus, being flown in from Yosemite, 10 minutes out. I watched the residents snap into a semi-ordered chaos. Ten crucial minutes. Prepping the trauma bay. Anticipating acute management, who was going to do it, half-tying the yellow paper gowns. Anyone who had looked tired didn’t anymore.
Students wishing to go to medical school — premedical students — have gone through pretty much the same process for nearly a century. The requirements have some variability according to the whims of particular medical schools, but in general a person wishing to go to medical school needs a four year collage degree, during which he or she has completed two years of chemistry (including organic chemistry), a year of …
Try your hand at a question from one of our anatomy exams.
What nerve supplies the obturator internus muscle (a muscle in the pelvis)?
The correct answer is the “nerve to obturator internus.” It’s like answering who is buried in Grant’s Tomb.
As a time-strapped medical student, it feels like a godsend when a medical term is named in an obvious way. Even a lay person can intuit the meaning of medical terms …
One Saturday morning at the Salt Lake City Veterans Affairs Medical Center, I got out of a call room bed and realized I had done it. The year everyone dreads, the year everyone says, “you just need to get through” was finally over. I had completed my write-ups on all the patients I admitted overnight. My emergency room consultation requests had been seen. I checked my pager for missed pages: …
I’ve been on hiatus from blogging for the past few months because of the exam I took last week: the medical boards, or Step 1, an eight hour test that covers all of the first two years of medical school to prepare us for the hospital wards. To give you an idea of what it entails, most second-year medical students use a …
The fight for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens has been a long and storied one. We have fought for rights related to family, marriage, anti-discrimination and service to our country. We have reveled in the freedom to be openly ourselves in public and have cheered as the fight for equality became a priority not only for ourselves but also for our straight allies. As Rhode Island recently …
A few weeks ago I had the distinct privilege to attend TEDMED as a Front Line Scholar. TEDMED isn’t your usual medical conference; artists share the stage with scientists and your notions of what healthcare could be are shifted.
While the talks I attended were often inspiring and eye-opening, the interaction with fellow attendees was by far the most enriching aspect of the …
Interview season is winding down and budding physicians everywhere are clutching tightly to their hard-fought medical school acceptance letters. I thought now would be an opportune time to reflect on what I wish I had known before starting medical school.
Let’s boil it down to five essential aspects of medical school that you wouldn’t expect or are of such crucial importance you should be reminded of them.
Giving and receiving feedback is really hard. When I left training and joined the faculty at a major medical school last year I found many things about my new position daunting. Fitting into a well established practice; learning a new system; being a teacher; juggling different services and roles; billing appropriately; and last but not least, giving feedback.
Psychological and logistical hurdles make it challenging to deliver feedback. Constructively criticizing the …
“That makes no sense!” a friend recently blurted out to me after I finished helping her understand how the vast majority of internal medicine residents are trained in this country. Her incredulousness was less about the “how,” and more about the “where.”
No doubt. When you consider that the overwhelming majority of practitioners will ultimately be practicing almost exclusively in the outpatient environment, and that cost-conscious healthcare reform efforts are specifically …
I recently spoke at the Student National Medical Association’s (SNMA) Annual Medical Education Conference in Louisville, KY. Accompanying me was former SNMA President Bryant Cameron Webb, MD, JD. We covered three main topics in our workshop: medical education, the practice of medicine, and the underserved.
Medical education
Many people believe that there is, or soon will be, a physician shortage. There are nearly 1 million physicians scattered across America representing a ratio …
When I was growing up in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, there was always some smart aleck boy on the playground who had “facts” to share about the Soviets. His recitation was meant to emphasize how weird, how different, how other our arch enemies were. “They make you wear all brown and gray there.” “They eat only boiled cabbage and potatoes.” “They tell you what to …
When I came to medical school, I was certain I wanted to do primary care. Despite the forces that steer many of us off the path – how many times have we heard, “but you’re too smart to do primary care!”? – after three years of medical school, I was still committed to primary care.
But I struggled with which type of program would be best for me. I applied to both …
Predatory Publishers, Batman! The news out of Gotham City (New York Times) tells a tale of deception and woe. “Pseudo-academia?” How can open access to information be a bad thing, and why does Nature call some of these journals “The Dark Side of Publishing”?
What is Open Access?
Open Access is a movement encouraging free and unrestricted access to published material. The movement takes many forms, from …
The practice of medicine is based on a solid fund of knowledge and a physician’s ability to quickly assimilate and organize information during a patient encounter. However, the process of making a diagnosis and formulating a treatment plan is not always straightforward. Often, what separates the truly exceptional physicians from the rest is the ability to attack problems from alternative angles–more simply put, creativity.
Traditionally, medical education is centered around science. …
For over a decade, I have advised pre-meds on how to maximize their chances of getting into medical school. During this time, as I witnessed thousands of anxiety-ridden pre-meds wade doggedly through the murky waters of medical school admissions, I have noticed pre-med difficulties often pale in comparison to those of pre-meds parents. It’s often much easier to be the athlete on the field than the coach on the sidelines. …
As of late, patient engagement has been laudably deemed a “miracle drug,” a silver bullet slicing through the tangled morass that is our American healthcare system. The comparison may be hyperbole, but the potential impact of patient engagement does have merit. With engaged patients, medical problems can be diagnosed swiftly and treated with higher success rates. Illness can be prevented and emergency department usage can be abated. Care can be …
As a first year medical student, one of our many responsibilities is to shadow a nurse once a month to gain an appreciation for their job. On one such shift, I asked my nurse-preceptor his greatest complaint about doctors. I expected to hear something about respecting nurses, or spending more time listening to the patients. Instead, I heard this:
“I wish doctors would communicate better with each other.”
I’ve never been one with much affection for cold or inclement weather and as such, between November and April, most of my training is done on the treadmill. While many people lament the monotony and unchanging scenery that treadmill running brings, I take the time to lose myself in podcasts.
Recently, during a set of race-pace intervals, I listened to a podcast that …
