Category: Medical school

Medical education in the COVID-19 pandemic can’t be ignored

Within the current COVID-19 pandemic, health care workers and educators have quickly needed to make adaptations and sacrifices. In order to make room for the conservation of necessary aspects of care, we need to take a conscientious look at our resourc…

The medical education question that needs to be changed

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” That is a common question you hear in the setting of medical education. I think I heard it for the first time on my first clinical rotation. A little background, I was a non-traditional medical stu…

When chlamydia became TMI

“Would an STI cause abdominal pain?” someone in a class discussion asked. “Well, when I had chlamydia, I didn’t have abdominal pain,” I responded truthfully. Instantly, the group went silent. “OK, Jay. That’s … TMI,” someone else in the group quickly r…

An oath I cannot keep

This week I will be taking the physician’s oath. I am a person who only makes promises I can keep. Thus, I am struggling with committing myself to certain parts of the oath. Reflecting over the last four years of medical school, I can say with ce…

Deploring racism isn’t enough: Addressing white privilege in medical school

If you ask a group of medical students to raise their hands if they are, in fact, racist, I’d venture to guess that not a single hand would shoot up. And I don’t think they would be lying. I am sure that no student believes that he, she, or they are a …

Responding to medical students’ concerns and anxieties during these unprecedented times

Everyone is in the same situation across the country in these unprecedented times. What a statement. A statement that every medical student has undoubtedly heard in utter multitude during these times of virtual medical curricula in place of clinical cu…

It’s so important to just take another moment with your patients

Medical schools around the country remain closed due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, swapping hands-on learning experience on wards and within the operating room for Zoom lectures and telehealth visits. Ten months ago, this was the furthest thing I i…

Post-COVID medical education must teach the real reasons for health disparities

Jason Hargrove, a 50-year-old Detroit bus driver, died from COVID-19 after being turned away from care multiple times while visibly cyanotic. Rana Zoe Mungin, a 30-year-old teacher in Brooklyn, was sent home several times until she was ill enough from …

How a sojourn atop a mountain in Vietnam changed my life forever

As the gentle rumbles of thunder became increasingly sonorous, the sharp crackles of lightning casting out the darkness of night, striking like the angry whips from a scorned martinet, and the torrential rain now cascading down from our awning like loo…

I graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot

My phone chimed. I received an email stating that rotations were canceled, so I had effectively graduated medical school while sitting in the parking lot of my local grocery store. It felt like a natural end to an isolating day. That morning, the cherr…