Back in the 70s, Dr. Denton A. Cooley would do eight or so heart operations a day often on babies and children with heart defects. One day, he operated on four babies. Three of them died. It was around eight o’clock at night, and as Dr. Cooley wa…
Category: Medical school
How to match into dermatology: A medical student shares her success story
I didn’t match dermatology the first time. It was a harrowing experience, and I had a chip on my shoulder until the day I opened my match envelope. The reality is that in the last ten years, dermatology has become the most competitive specialty i…
How a food blog paid for medical school tuition
Three years ago I left my medical school interviews thinking I was not going to be accepted. “You seem like a businesswoman. Why do you want to be a doctor?” I was asked. I had spent my undergraduate years devoted to building an online food blog with o…
Celebrating Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first African American female physician in the United States
Last month on February 3, 2019, we celebrated National Women Physician’s Day (NWPD). Created in 2016 by the Physician Mom Group (PMG) in collaboration with Physicians Working Together (PWT) and Medelita, NWPD honors the first female physician in the U….
The difference between learning medicine and doing medicine
Back when I was a third-year medical student, I would sometimes bike to the hospital campus early enough to catch the groundskeepers cleaning the promenade in front of the medical school before the foot traffic arrived. Discovery Walk, as it’s called, …
Teaching medical professionalism through literature
A excerpt from From Reading to Healing: Teaching Medical Professionalism through Literature (Literature and Medicine). There are several traditional ways to teach about professionalism. Some training programs have didactic lectures on this issue. These…
Teaching medical professionalism through literature
A excerpt from From Reading to Healing: Teaching Medical Professionalism through Literature (Literature and Medicine). There are several traditional ways to teach about professionalism. Some training programs have didactic lectures on this issue. These…
Does a work-life balance really exist for young mothers pursuing a medical career?
As our society’s awareness of mental-health issues increases, the idea of balancing personal and professional life has become a central topic of conversation. It cannot be disputed that finding a healthy equilibrium is especially important for mothers …
The hidden curriculum of medical school can be overwhelming and unforgiving
I met Mr. B during my week on the endocrine service of my internal medicine rotation. My attending told me we were being consulted for this patient’s high sugars and a foot ulcer, and asked me to take the history. I walked into Mr. B’s room and was imm…
A medical student’s first code. Here’s what he learned.
Well, today it happened. I participated in my first code. We were in the telemetry unit (the room where they monitor all the patients who have EKG strips) to ask about a different patient of mine only to find that a patient was coding (lost a life-sust…
