Education

Medical students across the country, such as myself, are struggling to come to terms with the pandemic. The most affected of this group is the current fourth years, trying to embark on their journey of picking a specialty and finding a residency position. As we are considered “non-essential,” we must deal with the consequences of the administration making decisions for us. I speak for myself specifically when I say I ...

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When a coalition of medical organizations, led by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), petitioned in 2001 to cap medical resident work hours, they were turned down by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Despite their rejection, students and young doctors were determined. They knew that exhausted residents had poorer health and made more ...

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The only drawback to reading The Plague by Albert Camus for the first time while experiencing the COVID-19 pandemic is that I will never get the experience of reading it from a less personal perspective. As the plague in the novel begins to unfold slowly through rat deaths and lockdowns, I recognized my own incredulity in the townspeople as they struggle to accept their new normal. Camus names their reluctance ...

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When I made the choice to pursue a medical school education three years ago, I never imagined preparing to matriculate during a pandemic. After accepting a position at the Icahn School of Medicine in March, processing what came next became muddled in between figuring out how to transition to living and working out of a small one-bedroom apartment in New York City due to COVID-19. Can my partner and I ...

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Whispers of fluctuating rumors had filled our ears for the last week; group messages were exploding with controversy -- the invisible threat, COVID-19, had reached the Texas Medical Center. All meetings for over 25 people were canceled, effective immediately. Suddenly, during the season when as a third-year medical student, I was supposed to be rotating through clinical electives, learning how to become the pediatrician I always dreamed of being, all ...

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As I sit here and stare at my computer screen for the 11th hour today, my attention has drifted from my hypothetical study material to reality. Over the past two months, I’ve spent hours on WebEx lectures as opposed to learning from patients, hours on video lessons instead of casual chats with residents and attendings on the wards, hours on virtual cases instead of seeing, diagnosing, and treating patients myself, hours ...

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When the director of my general surgery program asked for a report on how the pandemic was affecting the residents, I queried my colleagues, promising anonymity to encourage candor. I received a wide variety of responses and reactions. Some are thriving; others are not. Overall, everyone understands that this is a historic crisis that we will recount at the end of our careers. All are grateful to face the challenge at ...

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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 resources. As such, two missions have been embraced nationally by health care systems and university hospitals: conserve personal protective equipment (PPE), and reduce viral exposures to staff and students. Medical ...

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“But, surely offer you therapy or mental health services?” I asked an internal medicine resident and friend on the frontlines in New York City. “No, not really. Well, there’s one person for our whole group,” they responded. “And do people feel comfortable going to that person?” I prodded. “Honestly, even if we had time, it could be seen as weak. Like, you don’t want to be that person that needed it. And we ...

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