Author: Nathan Juergens

Nathan Juergens Nathan Juergens (4 Posts)

Contributing Writer

University of Minnesota Medical School


My name is Nate and I am in the Class of 2017 at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. Writing is an excellent release from the hustle and rigor of medical education. It is also an activity where I get to make the decisions, which is somewhat unfamiliar at my stage of training.




Follow-Ups and Downs: Part 2 of 2

Traditional “clerkships,” as they are known, are two-to-eight-week-long clinical experiences in each of the many medical specialties taken during the third and fourth years of medical school. During these programs, students see patients and learn directly from the doctors responsible for their care. It’s a combination of structured didactic learning, self-directed experience and day-to-day grunt work. After the month-plus spent in, for example, neurology, students get comfortable thinking about common problems people seeing neurologists might have and the options for dealing with those problems … and then they move on to the next clerkship.

A Case for Longitudinal Clerkships: Part 1 of 2

Medical education has remained largely unchanged since 1889, when a young William Osler was recruited to be the chair of medicine at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. Borrowing principles he learned at universities in Europe, he established the Hopkins’ residency model, originally named because doctors-in-training lived in the hospitals where they apprenticed. He also recognized the importance of bringing students to the patient’s bedside during their early training, understanding that basic scientific principles are better retained when applied to real-world illness.

One Step 1 Experience

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The only clocks in the room were the digital, silent type, but still I heard it. The first hurdle to becoming a board-certified physician was looming as the ticking in my head grew louder. It is now the summer following my second year of medical school at the University of Minnesota, and students across the country have just taken the eight-hour-long, 308-question U.S. Medical Licensing Examination Step 1. Here I outline some of my experiences preparing for and taking Step 1.

Modern Bloodletting

Methods for letting blood out from a patient’s body to cure them of disease were described in ancient Ayurvedic texts from India as early as the 7th century B.C. and the practice was employed by civilizations such as the Mesopotamians, Egyptians and ancient Greeks. This treatment was based on the system of medicine known as ‘humorism,’ which posited that an excess or deficiency in any of the primary bodily fluids directly influenced a person’s health.

Nathan Juergens Nathan Juergens (4 Posts)

Contributing Writer

University of Minnesota Medical School


My name is Nate and I am in the Class of 2017 at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. Writing is an excellent release from the hustle and rigor of medical education. It is also an activity where I get to make the decisions, which is somewhat unfamiliar at my stage of training.