I’m not sure why my parents were surprised when I told them that I was applying to go into family medicine. It seemed like a logical transition after spending six years working in public health and primary care before medical school, but from the perspective of Taiwanese immigrant parents, I couldn’t have made a more absurd career choice. I was confronted with comments such as, “Most people choose careers to make ...
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Once again, medical schools continue their annual fraudulent and misleading statistics in regards to primary care workforce production. The Dean's Lie is back and rampant across the country. It only seems to get worse. When will they learn? USA Today: Match Day: More medical graduates enter primary care
About one-quarter (11,762) of the applicants matched to resident positions that train doctors to be on the front line of care — in ...
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A letter from a medical student at the end of her gross anatomy course.
Dearest Walter,
The time we've spent together over the past few months has been wonderful, but I'm afraid it must come to an end. We knew this day would come. I must move on with my life, and you must move on, too. We will never see each other again, but I will never forget you. You have ...
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Institutional leaders in academic medicine are frustrated by what they perceive to be a short list of limited assets that can be used to guide or encourage individual and group behavior: faculty rank and/or institutional titles, compensation and budgetary authority, and space.
Even though the organization’s work takes place at the bottom, done largely by self-directed professionals, an academic medical center’s professional intellect is rarely recognized as an asset, let alone ...
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I just took step three of the national board exams - the final in a series that all U.S. physicians must pass to practice medicine unsupervised. The two day exam, composed of multiple choice questions and simulated patient cases requiring free-text answers, brought up subjects that we haven't thought about since medical school (Sick children? Terrifying.) The test also shed some light into how doctors think under ...
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In the satirical novel The House of God, author Samuel Shem writes about experiences as a medical student at Harvard. In the novel, many famous quotations are used that have been passed on from generation after generation of medical students and residents. Some slang terminology is also referenced and characters are created to illustrate the qualities of certain types of students.
One particular student that is found in every medical school ...
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After graduating from college I had the opportunity to spend two years working at the Institute of Medicine on a variety of health care improvement topics. When it came time to apply to medical school I noticed an odd dissonance—the challenges I had been grappling with at the IOM were not manifest in most medical school curricula. I knew that multidisciplinary teams ...
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Prior to entering the medical field, my preconceived notion of what makes a good doctor essentially compromised of compassion, intelligence, and the ability to think fast on ones feet. Although I continue to believe that these professional qualities are paramount to excellent patient care, I am finding that other, less obvious proficiencies are also required. Ironically, these skills that I have in ...
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As a medical student, I am in direct contact with the past, present and future of science. Sometimes, for instance, I read books concerning the history of medicine that bring me back to how diseases were diagnosed and treated a hundred years ago. Bloodlettings, leeches, herbs, and venoms.
It’s amazing to see how medical science has progressed since then. It’s only been a hundred years. We have gone from the discovery ...
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After a long day on the internal medicine ward at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, I rushed across town to lead that evening’s two-hour group diabetes visit at Union Square Family Health Center in Somerville, MA. So when my preceptor asked me if I’d lead the group on a field trip after the two-hour visit, it was the last thing I wanted to do.
Although we had discussed taking our Brazilian patients ...
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"A comprehensive and extremely useful roadmap for doctors."
-Eric Topol, MD, author of The Creative Destruction of Medicine
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Past 6 Months
Dear lawmakers: This is what it’s like to be a doctor today
Matthew Moeller, MD | PhysicianA gun owner responds to Sandy Hook
Edwin Leap, MD | PhysicianIs Chris Christie too obese to run for president?
Jeffrey Parks, MD | PhysicianIf I’m wrong about guns, can you please explain why?
Claire McCarthy, MD | PhysicianPrimary care doctors may no longer be needed
Doug Olson, MD | PhysicianWalgreens moves into primary care, and it’s our own damn fault
Kevin Pho, MD | Kevin's Take