When the University of Pennsylvania’s president Liz Magill was forced to resign her position due to her equivocal stance regarding antisemitic harassment on Penn’s campus, J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD, was soon announced as her interim success…
Category: Medical school
Is it noble or selfish to never practice medicine after getting a medical degree?
A Harvard medical school student realized in his third year that he had lost his desire to become a doctor. Nevertheless, the student decided to complete his fourth year and obtain his MD degree. The student is now planning for a career in pharma or ev…
Catastrophic failure of educational leadership can affect medical students
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said he can’t define pornography, but he knows it when he sees it. Stewart might just as well have been talking about leadership—reflecting the difficulty in providing a precise definition of leadership b…
Communication in health care: lessons from a standardized patient [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! Join Esther Covington, a professional standardized patient. Esther shares her firsthand experiences, shedding light on the critical role communication, empathy, and assumptions play in medi…
Exploring medical students’ vital role in patient care [PODCAST]
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Catch up on old episodes! Join Nicole Cifra, an adolescent medicine physician, as we delve into the often-underestimated but invaluable role of medical students in patient care. Nicole shares her personal journey, e…
September in medicine: scouting season for future doctors
In medicine, September marks scouting season. Like professional baseball clubs, residency programs meticulously generate and analyze scouting reports for prospective interns, aimed toward building an ideal lineup of future doctors that functions seamle…
From medical humanities student to physician
At seventeen, I envisioned two types of physicians: the doctor who cared about me and my needs, and the doctor who was cold and detached. At that point in my life, I had experienced both types of physicians from the patient perspective. My dream was to…
How Tratak yoga reshaped my USMLE Step 2 prep
This is a notable example of the impactful outcomes that can arise from venturing beyond conventional routes to chart distinctive journeys toward success. Like countless other medical students, I committed months to intensive preparation, diligently ta…
The role of income in medical school acceptance
It was during my general surgery rotation that I had an encounter with a urologist attending while waiting for pending surgery to occur. As we made small talk about the medical field, our conversation gravitated toward the topic of medical school admis…
Balancing tension and kindness in medical education
I recall a particularly tense interaction on my surgery rotation in medical school. The sub-intern on our team, a dedicated classmate of mine, was instructed to carry the call pager one Friday afternoon, to the undue chagrin of the team’s nurse p…
