3:30 a.m. – Wake up. 4:00 a.m. – Leave apartment. 4:15 a.m. – Arrive at hospital. 4:20 a.m. – Print out the patient list. 4:20 – 5:25 a.m. – Split the list of 50 patients with your partner, go to a computer and write…
Category: Education
Recognizing the secret identity of physicians
It was recently National Teacher Appreciation Week, and many were busy recognizing their superhero teachers. Schools dedicate the week to their teachers, parents bustle about with flowers, handmade cards, and gift baskets. For me, though last week w…
How a disability changed this medical student
As a college freshman in 2012, my life seemed perfect. I was attending Rhodes College in Memphis, TN, with the dream of becoming a pediatric oncologist. To that end, I was serving as a volunteer, researcher, and clinical intern at the world-renowned St…
A medical student’s biggest fear
It was the last week of my EMS elective. I was incredibly lucky to ride with one of the EMS captains who was eager to take me to any call that sounded interesting. We were called to a possible stroke. An 82-year-old woman with sudden-onset unilateral w…
A medical student’s first patient presentation
In medical school, you’re not taught how to give stellar patient presentations. Yes, you’re shown the traditional order of things: “Give an effective one-liner first, then tell the HPI [history of present illness] but only give pertinent info, etc.” Ju…
Medicine was consuming this medical student. Was it worth it?
For as long as I remember, studying medicine has always been the goal I focused on the most. For years, I thought that I knew the path I was taking, and that I calculated the benefits and drawbacks. However, with time, I learned that no matter how much…
A medical educator’s poignant epiphany
For a long time, I didn’t feel as if I were getting any older. Because I’ve been at my institution since 1975, I’ve always been surrounded by the people who educated me. Though my teachers and mentors have undoubtedly aged, to me, none of them seems mu…
The truth about Caribbean medical schools
I graduated from St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada and now work as an emergency medicine physician at a trauma center in Northern California. To some, that may seem like an extreme jump or a rare success story. The stigma of a Carib…
The benefits of compassion always outweigh its risks
It was an ordinary afternoon in my outpatient internal medicine rotation. I prepared to enter a room for a congestive heart failure hospital follow-up patient. I mentally prepared myself. I was going to ask for his hospital records (particularly lookin…
Want to create a review course? Here’s how this physician did it.
When I told my colleagues that I was going to try to create the first psychiatry review course at the University of Toronto, I received the same two responses: “It’s about time somebody did that!” and “What is wrong with you?…
