Like many of my colleagues, I teach and supervise students, residents, nurses, and respiratory therapists. I’m also the medical director of a PICU. Overall, I’ve been teaching and doing administration for over 30 years. And, like most of my colleagues, I never received any formal instruction at all in how to do these things. To some extent I got help from my own mentors, primarily by watching what they did, ...
Education
Reporters and doctors are more similar than you think
One of the things I have come to really enjoy and appreciate is the opportunity to interview the subjects of my articles and multimedia pieces. In a way, being a reporter reminds me a lot of being a physician-in-training - both roles require me to go into a room, learn an individual's story inside out, and present the learned information for a further goal.In my Public Issues Reporting class, the ...
Conflicts of interest don’t always involve money
Conflicts of interest in medical research are extremely common - one recent study found that 52% of the experts involved in developing clinical practice guidelines for the management of diabetes in the United States and Canada had a financial conflict of interest. Although doctors and researchers often declare financial conflicts of interests when they make presentations and publish papers, there are many who argue that declaring financial conflicts is no longer ...
6 things I wish I had known at the beginning of medical school
It's amazing how quickly you can lose track of time as you power through the books. Once everything is setup -- coffee to the left, pens and highlighters to the right, Grooveshark playlist perfectly tuned -- you can suddenly look up and realize that three weeks have flown by and there are 123 multiple choice questions to be answered in the morning.Over the past year and a half I've learned ...
Advice to prospective family medicine residents
I don’t like selecting colleagues through the Match. The process was established to allow students to get the best opportunity available and I feel that our program (and our patients who rely on our trainees to provide care) is in jeopardy every year. It always turns out better than I anticipate, so I shouldn’t complain. However, we have to interview 60 prospective residents to fill our six slots so ...
Real life financial implications of medical student debt
As a non-traditional student who entered medical school in my early thirties, I was aware that sacrificing prime earning years would impact my finances. Now in the third year of medical school and considering various career options, I paused to evaluate the financial implications of my student debt and my life goals.The common refrain from attending physicians and the school administration was "follow your heart, it will all work out ...
A medical student is forced to step beyond the things he knows
There comes a moment when you're forced to step beyond the things you know. It's a split second -- an instant adjustment from the safety of recollection to the insecurity of the unknown. Day after day we head into the library, hunching over twice-reviewed notes and hidden behind piles of books yet to be read. We push ourselves to work harder, study longer. We toil knowing that each page holds ...
Appreciating the beauty of a time out in the OR
If you've ever spent time in the operating room, you are already familiar with the words the circulating nurse uses to signal the time out - the few minutes before a procedure begins when the surgical and anesthesia teams review a patient's case. If you're a non-medical type, or a medical student whose surgical rotations are scheduled late in the 3rd year, then you're just as clueless as I was ...
The magic of learning medicine
There is a time for sitting in classrooms. When such heady topics as congestive heart failure are abstract and intangible. Discussion veers from myocytes to cardiac output and stroke volume.The world, through the student's eyes, is inflamed with passion and opportunity. The reality of doctoring is a distant dream. Hope peals back layers of fear and loss of confidence. Reward is imagined as a handshake, a return to health, and ...
Sleep deprivation as a medical student
An excerpt from Everything I Learned in Medical School: Besides All the Book Stuff.My body jolts awake to a familiar sound. After a few blind swipes, my blows hit their target, and once again, there is silence. The air in the room is cool and crisp, and every fiber of my being wants me to remain in the welcoming warmth under the covers. It is Saturday morning. On any other ...
A medical student’s first patient encounter
This is an account of my first encounter with an in-patient from a little while back -- I have provided only minimal details about the patient to maintain compliance with HIPAA.After a firm handshake with each of us, our preceptor embarked purposefully up two floors to our first in-patient encounter. As we walked, I peeked into the rooms with the door left ajar and wondered what brought each individual to ...
When pimping a medical student can backfire on a doctor
The third year of medical school is a lesson in humility. In the OR, you’ll invariably cut the suture too short, or too long, or too slowly. On the floors, the one laboratory value you haven’t checked is the only value vital to the patient’s survival. And just when you think you know everything there is to know about a disease, the Attending Physician will keep asking you questions until ...
The 3 types of residents that medical students will encounter
Every medical student is a bit apprehensive when he/she knows they will be assigned a new resident. The same questions always come up. Will the resident be nice? Will they understand my busy schedule? Will they make me do a ton of scutwork? Will they make me write all of his/her progress notes? And maybe most importantly, will they let me leave early to study for boards or enjoy the ...
The lack of underrepresented minorities in STEM
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (aka STEM) represent the fields in which the U.S. continues slip in their ranking worldwide. These fields are crucial for the U.S. to remain competitive in an increasingly global market. Workers in these fields spur innovation, have very stable job security. Students in these fields earn more money than non-STEM graduates. Indeed, improved STEM education is a priority of the Obama administration.Despite the benefits of pursuing study in ...
A portfolio of watercolors remind me of why anatomy is fascinating
Gross anatomy is exactly as it sounds. You learn anatomy, and smell gross afterwards. You spend 6-8 hours the day before studying and preparing for a 2-hour dissection the next day. When an exam approaches, you double the 6-8 hours each day and sometimes forget who you, your friends, and family even are. Not to mention the perpetual question, “Why am I doing this?”A portfolio of watercolors by Danny Quirk, ...
Doctors who make the dysfunctional health system work
Now that it has been a couple of weeks since finishing my family medicine rotation, it struck me on the invaluable lessons I learned there from two amazing preceptors. My family medicine experience was in a community group practice based in the city where I am doing my rotations. This city is in a suburban/rural environment with an incredible mix of patients ... the age range one day was from ...
The value of continuity of care is priceless
During my first week on a pediatric outpatient clinic as a third year medical student, I spent an average of 140 minutes caring for each patient. Looking back at that first week, the amount of time I spent with each patient ranged from a “brief” 79-minute visit to one whopper 188-minute visit where I reviewed several journals in the workroom and sought two attending physician opinions to be completely sure. ...
Be an innovator in medical school
The practice of medicine is changing structurally, technology, and financially at an unprecedented rate. Scientific advances in genomics, electronic medical records, an increased focus on quality improvement, and changes in the health insurance structure are a few of the areas in which the landscape of medicine is changing. However, in many of these processes physicians seem to be bystanders. Medicine requires innovative physicians to be part of this change. At ...
The 7 types of medical students you’ll meet
The third year of medical school is definitely an interesting one. You leave the classroom and enter the big bad world of medicine, and you quickly realize that much of what you’ve learned is for naught. You also realize that the medical student next to you could become your best friend, or the bane of your existence -- or fall anywhere along that spectrum. Here is a list of the ...
Happy residents do much more for their patients
The resident’s training can be compared to the one received by Navy Seals or U.S. Marines in many ways. Physical endurance, psychological warfare towards the trainee, long service hours and quick life or death decisions are all aspects of both types of preparation. In most cases, this turns out to be a great burden on the resident’s life, especially on the interns, whose lives have dramatically changed from one day ...
