Rather Humerus: You May Have These “Funny Genes” in Your Chromosomes!
Rather Humerus A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
Columns
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland
A philomath expressing enthusiasm for anatomy and puns, Nikita is a Class of 2018 medical student at The Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She balances science and art, as artist of the medical web comic Rather Humerus. She is passionate about poetry, reading, writing, gastronomy, animals, LGBT rights, women equality and having a strong WiFi connection to the Internet. She currently lives in Dublin, Ireland and has lived in India, Dubai and most recently Singapore.
Rather Humerus
A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
The Silent Teacher
By this the time of year, most first-year medical students have finished with anatomy. Anatomy: for most of us, this course is our first time seeing a deceased human being in an academic setting. And for some of us, the first cut we make on the first day of anatomy is the first cut we make on a person’s flesh. Sound scary? It did to me. But it also sounded amazing. To me, anatomy seemed …
Reflections on Applying to MD/PhD Programs
I recently sat in on a luncheon with a few other current MD/PhD students as we chatted with, and fielded questions from, half a dozen applicants to our program. This brought back a multitude of memories from my own admissions season five years ago. I’ve also had plenty of experiences in the past few years interacting with talented undergraduates who are considering applying to MD/PhD programs, so I’d like to share some reflections on my process, …
Nutrition Nuances and The Best Soup
I read an interesting article this weekend entitled “Why Nutrition Is So Confusing” that described what all med students know: nutrition data is largely inconclusive, often contradictory, and falls short of strong claims that would make for truly useful recommendations. Trials are often done for a few years and then extrapolate to decades or, conversely, populations are followed for decades and then analysts try to pull out a few recommendations. Although many of us philosophically favor diet …
How Do You Study?
We have all asked that question to someone at some point. If you are currently in medical school, chances are you aced your way through high school. But that was high school, where you could have solved a bunch of exam papers from the previous years and skimmed through chapter summaries weeks before GCE Advanced level exams and still pulled out an A. Sadly, those days are over and you have been thrown into a rather massive pool of …
Do You Remember?
There exist, in truth, three simple words that strike dread into the hearts of every physician: Do. You. Remember. This phrase was introduced to me in the middle of first year. I was spending time in my medical student lounge when a link popped up on my newsfeed to a TED talk by Dr. Brian Goldman, an emergency physician from Toronto who hosts the radio show White Coat Black Art and who has also authored the book “The Night Shift.” In …
When the Brain Says, “I Need More…”
While walking around campus at the beginning of the new semester, it is hard not to notice the sudden appearance of signs instructing us to “Breathe Freely” because the campus is now “Smoke-Free.” The new law has challenged some students and faculty to forego smoking altogether, and has enticed discussion about the regulation of harmful addictive substances, often revealing the social baggage associated with addictive behavior. The duality of alcohol, for example, as both the …
“The Roots are Bitter, but the Fruit is Sweet”
Little did I know this adage was, in fact, Aristotelian in origin and not dreamed up by my mother. Nevertheless, it is one I remember first hearing recently: somewhere along the line as I progressed from high school to college and now to medical school. As I felt more intense academic pressure, as I complained more about the volume or difficulty of what I had to study, or if I was just plain exhausted—these were …
And She’s Back: An Honest Reflection about Frequent Fliers in our Emergency Departments
The only thing different was the room number and the day of the week. “Hey, our favorite flyer is back,” said my attending as I went to see the patient in room 10 for the first time in my life. The patient was already doomed as I became jaded, cynical and wondered what the health care system or we as physicians could do with patients like this. Let’s be clear, I still had never met …
Apps for Medical Students on the Go
Advances in technology have not only dramatically changed health care, but have also changed the way we learn medicine. Gone are the days of carrying clunky textbooks. You can also put away your six different highlighters. Why? Because technology has become your new best friend. Having a smartphone—or better, a tablet—on hand has become an especially useful tool for navigating your studies. Here is a guide to some of the apps that I have found …
Rather Humerus: Happy Valentine’s Day!
Rather Humerus A web comic aiming to shine a creative and Rather Humerus spotlight on med school.
The First Piece of My Puzzle
“If you start feeling lightheaded or faint,” the surgeon told me in the operating room, “just don’t fall into the patient. You can fall anywhere else. Just not into the patient.” This was the first time I had ever shadowed a surgeon, and a dark cloud of fear started to cloak my feelings of excitement. I had never thought myself to be a queasy person, but suddenly I kept imagining myself plunging face-forward off of …
Columnist Emeritus
Mayo Clinic
Dr. T. N. Diem Vu, MD is a surgical critical care fellow in the Mayo Clinic Department of General Surgery. She graduated from Mayo Medical School in the Class of 2016. She completed a BS in molecular & cellular biology with a minor in writing seminars at Johns Hopkins University in 2012. Her interests outside of medicine include illustration, writing, singing and playing ukulele, photography, film, food, books, and spending time with loved ones.
Med Student Shadows
As medical students, we shadow physicians to learn about the nature of medicine from them and their patients. In this column, Diem traces her own shadow, preserving and illustrating her experiences--in class, in the hospital, and in between--as a medical student.