Through the course of medical education, students learn to call for “consults” from various medical specialties. Yet, consults can come in many forms — from social work, nutrition, law, ethics and policy. There is also much to be learned from premedical and post-bacc students, who may be walking into medicine with a fresh set of eyes. “Consults” invites experienced non-clinicians and undergraduates to contribute pieces relevant to the medical student community.
Guest Writer
University of Ottawa
Rebecca J. Hogue (Becky) is an ePatient blogger and flexible scholar. She is co-founder of Virtually Connecting, a PhD Candidate at the University of Ottawa and Associate Lecturer at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Professionally, she produces self-published eBooks, and teaches Emerging Technologies and Instructional Design online. Her research and innovation interests are in the areas of ePatient storytelling (pathography), blogging, and online collaboration.
I’m an ePatient blogger, academic, educator and breast cancer survivor. I write about my patient experience in hopes that medical professionals may achieve a better understanding of the patient’s perspective of the medical system. Like any profession, physicians are the experts of their field, but no doctor is the expert of all human pathophysiology. Because of this, the emerging interdisciplinary team of specialists has become a pragmatic step.
Four years. I had gone four years without crying in a faculty member’s or an advisor’s office. And there I was, sobbing all over myself, as I tried to explain the situation. A couple of days prior, I received a terse email from the training director, saying I needed to come in to meet with her. She was not happy with my most recent feat as a doctoral student.
Do you remember the last time your insurance denied payment for a visit or procedure you had? Or your gym double charged you for your membership fee? What did you do? Did you sit back and say – “Well, they must know better than me – I’ll just accept their decision.” Or did you call up and say, “Excuse me, but I believe there has been an error and I’d like you to fix it.” My guess is, you did the latter. What you did was advocate for yourself.
I’m an academic and an educator. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I chose to be treated in a university setting. It felt right to me, that if I had to go through the experience of breast cancer, that my body would become a teaching tool. It helped provide some form of meaning to the experience. It is with this lens that I found myself regretting not calling out to the clearly first-rotation medical student while in the emergency room.
The loudest sound I heard was neither the punctuated laughter of youthful teenagers nor the whispered voices of lovers holding hands, but the wind.
As I take off my glasses / and rub my sore eyes / I realize I have / myopia / in more ways than one.
The sarcophagus before me dominates the exhibition. Intricately carved animals, including a line of fierce lions, arise from the slab of marble. Peering more attentively, I even notice the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, wielding her characteristic shield and helmet. A horse pulls a chariot, and perhaps that is Hector there on the ground, the Prince of Troy now fallen.
“What’s a podiatrist?” I sigh, collect my thoughts and reply, “Oh, a foot doctor.” As soon as I say that, I see their facial expression change from confusion, to surprise. It happens all the time with friends, at social events and even my own parents. As a second-year podiatric medical student, I have heard this question over and over again.
For patients struggling to stay alive, organ donation serves as a new lease on life. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there are 123,358 people waiting for life-saving organ transplantation, yet there are only 13,125 organ donors. While subtle, nominal changes such as changing the U.S. organ donor program from an opt-in to an opt-out program have been proven to increase rates of organ donation, the rising levels of organ demand and stagnating levels of donors indicate that the only way to completely bridge the gap is through tangible and pervasive policy change.
Sometimes it is difficult to reconcile value systems that pull a person in opposite directions. Specifically in medicine, where the laws and nature of the work are so sensitive, yet also so important, it is within normal daily function to default to the ethics and American system of law. However, for Orthodox Jews, it is not that simple. Certain laws, such as the laws pertaining to the Sabbath, can make practicing medicine quite tricky.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on the blog The Arts & Humanities in the 21st Century Workplace by guest writer Jakub Kaczmarzyk. I see a unique side of people: the tops of their heads. I can spot gray hairs, roots and baldness at a glance. Faces, however, often escape me. At 6-foot-3, it’s hard to always see them. Where does that leave me? Out of touch. We are inherently different people, seeing from different perspectives and facing different …
It is no secret the US health care model is unsustainable. Costs continue to skyrocket, emergency rooms have become the primary care source for many of the uninsured, and physicians spend 22% of their time on nonclinical paperwork. Amidst the numerous problems and proposed causes, the unpredictable and high cost of health care is an undeniable symptom of a sick health care system. The price of procedures, visits, medications, and hospital stays has become a …
Post-Bacc Guest Writer
University of Vermont
Michael Aaron Vrolijk is in the post-baccalaureate premed program at the University of Vermont and will be applying to medical school in June. Prior to attending UVM, Aaron was a research assistant at the University of California, San Francisco as well as a contract researcher for Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation.
