Our Past is Our Future
We often find inspiration in our ability as humans to create anew. I too fall prey to the promises of New Year resolutions and birthday candles, beckoning to us with the allure that our future rests in our hands.
Featured
Writer-in-Training
Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
Sahr Yazdani is a fourth year medical student at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Illinois, and is a member of the Class of 2022. In 2018, she graduated from University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience and Evolutionary Anthropology. She enjoys exploring new cities on foot, watching reality TV, and baking ginger cookies in her free time. After graduating medical school, Sahr would like to pursue a career in pediatrics.
Leading the Rounds: The Medical Leadership Podcast — “Humanism and Living at the Edge of Wonder with Dr. Wes Ely”
Dr. Ely’s research has focused on improving the care and outcomes of critically ill patients with ICU-acquired brain disease. His team developed the primary tool by which delirium is measured in ICU-based trials and clinically at the bedside in ICUs worldwide.
The Unvaccinated Caregiver
It is Wednesday afternoon and I have one last annual visit for the day. As I enter the room, a slender 27-year-old woman wearing a white t-shirt and baggy blue jeans sits in the chair across from me.
Q&A with Dr. Timothy Dyster, MD
In this Q&A, we feature the founder of MedEd Models Dr. Timothy Dyster. Currently a fellow in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Dr. Dyster also serves as a resident editor for the Journal of Graduate Medical Education and is the lead contributing editor for the first edition clinical handbook, Huppert’s Notes. He shares his thoughts on medical education and advice for medical students looking to foray into this field.
A Tale of Two Patients
I was the student on the pediatric surgery service consulted to monitor her during her hospital stay — making sure we were ready to intervene if her esophagus ruptured and all that. After admitting her to the floor, we attempted to contact her parents. Mom was somewhere in Illinois, Dad doing I-still-don’t-know-what in Canada, both completely unaware that the life they each helped create was potentially in jeopardy at a Southeast Michigan hospital.
America Runs on Dunkin … and Diets
“What about my sugars?” she asked. In all honesty, since she was not hypoglycemic, I had not examined her specific blood glucose level or hemoglobin A1c too closely. Scrolling through the extensive list of her lab results, I spotted them and felt a knot form in my stomach.
On Everyone Doing Their Best
Lots of people get bigger bellies as they age. My aunt used to say it was because of all the love in your life building up. This man noticed his belly was growing a little more than expected.
Voting is Healthy: A Voter Mobilization Campaign in Georgia Founded by Medical Students
As medical students at Emory, we spent our first six months building a firm conception of what it means to be healthy. It did not take long to appreciate how much of our patients’ health would be determined by their social context before they ever walk into our clinics and hospitals. The importance of adequate and healthy nutrition, safe housing and manageable stress is clearly linked to patient outcomes. We can see these issues on the ballot in every election. In this sense, voting is healthy.
The Interview as an Invitation
Freud supposedly understood himself as a surgeon of the mind, dissecting his patients’ mental anatomy through the process of psychoanalysis. I found this comparison appealing, so when I started the psychiatry clerkship in my third year of medical school, I approached the interview in psychiatry as analogous to a surgical procedure — efficient, scripted, precise.
Should Birth Control Pills Be Over-the-Counter?
Many women have experience with using or trying to attain access to contraceptives. More than 100 countries offer contraception over the counter; however, the United States is not one them.
Re-Educated: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Will Change Medical Education Forever
Students across the country in all grade levels, from preschool to graduate school, had their educational routines upended by the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdown. In medicine, there were special challenges associated with adapting safety protocols to a field that inherently requires human interaction.
To My First Patient Who Passed
Yours is the name I carry on / You were the first I mourned when gone
Contributing Writer
Stanford University School of Medicine
Brian Smith is a first-year medical student at the Stanford University School of Medicine in Stanford, California, a member of the starting class of 2021. In 2019 he graduated from Stanford with a Bachelor of Science in biology and a minor in English, and in 2020 he graduated from Stanford with a Master of Science in biology. He enjoys writing poetry and narrative medicine, as well as running and reading in his free time. In the future, Brian would like to pursue a career in anesthesiology or oncology.