“Have you ever had feelings of depression?” I regretted asking that question the moment it slipped out of my mouth. In the span of what felt like 5 minutes but was probably 30 seconds, both the patient and I immediately became awkward. The patien…
Category: Medical school
Medicine won’t keep you warm at night
Life continues in medical school and residency. Engagements, marriages, and divorces. Becoming a parent to a child. Having a dog or cat. Love and loss. Life and death. Then there is the uniqueness and privilege of being in medical training combined wit…
International medical graduates ease the U.S. doctor shortage
Thousands of young doctors just learned where they’ll be spending the next few years of their lives in residency. A significant number of them will be U.S. citizens who completed medical school abroad. This corps of internationally educated docto…
Happy Doctor’s Day. What was this all for?
Happy Doctor’s Day. Every year, eager young pre-med students apply for medical school. When they don’t make it in and are quite determined, they apply to schools on a few Caribbean islands. They teach the same material, the same practical s…
Why this medical student tutors
Tutoring is the most selfish thing I do. This probably sounds counterintuitive, but let me explain. To state the obvious, medical school is hard. You spend four years pushing yourself to the limit of your comfort zone. For two years, you cram more info…
Why this medical school is doing it right
It’s been shown that patients can benefit from a satisfying medical experience and the actual clinical treatment. The satisfying medical experience in and of itself leads to trust, follow-through, and health improvements. Medical school is the op…
New medical students: Do not take yourself too seriously
When you are trapped in a locker room in only your underwear at 3 a.m., you realize how many things must have gone wrong for you to land in that spot. Within the first week of my clinical rotations, I managed to be bested by the scrub machine. It was a…
Requesting disability accommodations in medical school [PODCAST]
“I failed my Step 1 medical school board exam by 1 point. This was very hard for me to process, and I consistently wondered if I would have passed if I had just waited an additional week. This new challenge led me to reach out to a new resource: …
It goes without saying: a residency nterview
Describe a challenge and how you overcame it. Is this an interview? It is. I see. Yes, the way you are looking at me like I should be providing an answer. OK, well. You see this is a challenge right here because you are two-dimensional and yet I have b…
Don’t forget the socks and shoes: a reflection on the third year of medical school
I badged myself back to the operating room and hiked up my ill-fitting scrubs. The bouffant was twice the size of my head. It made me feel like a child playing dress-up in adult clothes. As I walked to the OR, I rehearsed what I would say in my head. N…
