Medical Student Editor, Writer-in-Training and Columnist Emeritus
Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University
Brent Schnipke is a third year medical student at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine in Dayton, OH. He is a 2014 graduate of Mount Vernon Nazarene University with a degree in Biology. His professional interests include writing, medical humanities, and higher education. When he's not studying, he can be found reading at a local coffee shop, training for his next race, or planning an adventure with his wife. Brent is also active on social media and can be reached on Twitter and Instagram @brentschnipke.
Prints, Pages, and Pagers
Prints, Pages, and Pagers aims to look closely at the lives of medical students and doctors, real or fiction, whose lives and experiences are told in novels, short stories, poetry, or any kind of writing. These book reviews are an opportunity for medical students to learn from the many fascinating stories produced by the field of medicine, and maybe to read something other than a textbook.
“Look, you’re not out on a four-year picnic at that medical school, so stop talking like a disappointed lover. You signed up for a spell of training and they’re dishing it out to you, and all you can do is take everything they’ve got, everything they hand to you, and tell yourself how lucky you are to be on the receiving end — so you can be a doctor, and that’s no bad price to pay for the worry, the exhaustion.”
Every other person in my family assured me I have nothing to fear, that I shouldn’t toss and turn in my bed at night feeling powerless because I’m in Philadelphia, thousands of miles away from India. Most days I reminded myself that to go to India I must first drag myself across the finish line of first year. But late at night alone in my apartment, I was haunted by lab values. I wracked my brain over the latest hemoglobin, sodium, potassium and chest x-ray. What am I missing? Is there something I can see that doctors with hundreds of years of collective experience cannot? The reality is that I didn’t have the answers for the people I love, and that thought terrified me more than anything.
Welcome, Player One! First clerkship. Ready? Go!
LEVEL 1, PSYCHIATRY ACUTE INPATIENT SERVICE, MISSION NOTES: Med student didactics at 0700 daily. Rounds start approximately at 0800. Comprehensive interview with team at bedside. Ask about daily activities and goals. Enter orders while running list. PM schedule varies. Check desk for group session and recreation schedules. Plan to admit at least 8 patients in 3 weeks. Work closely with social services to coordinate disposition.
Obamacare subsidies were upheld Thursday as the Supreme Court issued its decision on King v. Burwell. Here is your two minute brief on what the decision means.
For most medical students, the third year of medical school is their introduction to life in the hospital. This results not only in exciting learning opportunities, but also emotional tolls — grief, fear, anxiety, exhaustion — that can lead to serious problems including burnout, depression, and anxiety.
Within the next three years, ketamine, the popular club drug referred to as “Special K,” may replace the current generation of antidepressant drugs. By substantially reducing the latency of antidepressant effect, the use of ketamine as an antidepressant may hold promise and is in fact in Phase 3 trials for FDA approval. But, how does ketamine work to alleviate depressive symptoms, and how does this approach fit with our current understanding of depression? Do we currently understand depression?
Your neck muscles heaved as you sucked in air through pursed lips. Pink puffer, I thought immediately, to my shame. That wasn’t why I was here.
Picture the following two scenarios: The funeral procession of Henry V passes through Westminster Abbey, and the following remark is made: “The King from Eltham I intend to steal, / And sit at chiefest stern of public weal.” The second scenario is a physician who goes into an exam room and hears the patient talking about his “stomach pain,” intake of “spicy foods,” and his “use of Advil for headache relief.” These are two entirely unrelated scenarios, yes, but the shared theme is that both dialogues contain important clues to a bigger picture.
Recently, Congress passed the so called “Doc-Fix” bill bringing about changes to the Medicare reimbursement structure. Understandably, there has been great confusion about what the implications of these changes are, particularly for future and current physicians. Here are some of the key changes taking place as a result of the bill’s passage.
So now that we have discussed the many benefits of exercise, how much is recommended? National organizations such as the American Heart Association (AHA) have created evidence-based guidelines describing the minimum amounts and types of physical in which adults should regularly engage.
Cognition affects memory, attention, concentration, judgment and evaluation, and so it is no surprise that deterioration of these facilities can be extremely disturbing to patients and their families. Cognitive decline is a natural part of aging, and results from decreased white matter integrity over time. As the average lifespan continues to increase, dementia grows as a source of morbidity. Pharmacotherapy for dementia is still in its infancy, and while the commonly prescribed drugs have shown efficacy in slowing the progression of dementia, they do little to improve patients’ cognition. Thus, preventative steps to maintain cognition in the elderly are imperative. Exercise can play an important preventative role in this process; in addition, research has shown it to have the potential to reverse cognitive decline — an outcome that still eludes traditional pharmacotherapy.
The traditional structure of medical education begins with teaching normal anatomy and physiology followed by the various pathologies and treatments. Once students reach the clinical years, we are taught to think in the form of a SOAP note. First, perform a history and physical; then, order the necessary diagnostic tests to obtain your subjective and objective information. Next, form your assessment and plan — what is the problem, and how do you fix it?
Columnist
Sidney Kimmel Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University
Alison is a class of 2016 student at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson university, and graduated from Providence College with her BS in Biochemistry. In her time outside of medical school she enjoys running, reading, and traveling.
Mind Vitamins
Just like your multivitamin provides your body with the vitamins that may be missing from your diet, Mind Vitamins provides you with resources that may help fill in gaps in your med school curriculum. In med school we learn the scientific aspect of medicine that is necessary to treat diseases, but there are intangible and personal aspects that are necessary to treat the whole patient. This column will enrich your education so that you may be able to better understand your patients' perspectives and treat them not just as a disease, but as a person.
