“How did you like it there?” I ask, sitting down next to a new fellow (between bites of a plump sandwich, hoping there is no spinach in my teeth). I expect to hear the standard resident talking points — long hours, frequent call, and ballooning student…
As I saw the fellow purposely manipulate her fractured ankle, I knew I was wrong in not stopping him. Three hours earlier, Mr. Sanchez*, a past boxer, and soccer player, came in with a broken pinky. He was moving from Atlanta to Houston, and in the pro…
“Are you f*cking serious! What are you doing to my son! How can you have him tied to the bed like this!” Michael’s* mother was irate and yelling at my resident as I stood at the back of the room. Michael had HIV/AIDS with a CD4 count of 20 and dissemin…
Medical training is lengthening as students increasingly take gap years before and during medical school. Excessively long training times contribute to many problems. Trainees show high rates of burnout, depression, suicidal ideation, and alcohol abuse…
Wow, you’re in medical school? So you are going to be a doctor? What year are you? When are you going to finish? What are you going to go into? You should become a skin doctor, what do they call them again? It doesn’t matter, but they do go…
As a rising fourth-year med student, these are my words of wisdom for all students who are on their clinical rotations. Your mental health is paramount; do not neglect how you are feeling! There is not one med student that I know of who hasn’t felt anx…
As a rising fourth-year med student, these are my words of wisdom for all students who are on their clinical rotations. Your mental health is paramount; do not neglect how you are feeling! There is not one med student that I know of who hasn’t felt anx…
As first-year medical students, we learn that the hallmark of a holistic medical education is an emphasis on the human, personal side of this profession. One way we develop our patient-centered competency is through attending patient panels as part of …
“Death comes for all of us. It is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Dealing with the fact of death is unsettling. Yet there is no other way to live.” – Paul Kalanithi, MD Recently, first-year students of the medic…
During a day of shadowing during my first year of medical school, the physician I was following had been running behind schedule and instructed me to keep the final patient company until he caught up. I knocked on the door and found myself facing a wid…
