It Was Grief Speaking
We sit in a clumsy ring / under fluorescent lights, / halfway into the allotted one hour / before we realize that we are having / a conversation born a whole decade ago.
Featured
Contributing Writer
Albany Medical College
Sharon is a third-year medical student at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. In 2017, she graduated from Siena College with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology. Sharon's interests include health promotion, bioethics, and the use of medical humanities to foster healing and connection in both patients and providers. She enjoys doing yoga, painting, and running in her free time. After graduating from medical school, Sharon hopes to serve underresourced communities both domestically and abroad.
A Few Words on Health Disparities in the Asian-American Community
As stressed medical students looking for an eventful destination to spend our spring break, my friend and I chose to take a trip to America’s Big Apple, New York City. On a sunny day in NYC, I remember enjoying our morning cups of coffee and walking into a subway station when, suddenly, an older man shouted at us, “Take your corona and get out of my country!”
We Have a Cost Crisis in Medicine. What Can Medical Students Do To Help?
There is a cost crisis in medicine: the health care industry accounts for about 18 percent of the GDP in the United States, and predictive models see this increasing in the coming years. This is a problem for the country as a whole as an estimated 41 percent of working Americans have some level of medical debt.
three machines
so one day / i can translate to my patients / what my family missed.
Wards & Boards: Reducing the Clinical Training Learning Curve
My friends and I wished we knew how to flourish from the beginning, so we decided to create Wards & Boards, a peer-to-peer mentorship mobile app. The app compiled advice from fourth-year medical students who completed each clerkship designed for third-year students beginning their first rotation.
Snakes and Symbols: How Medicine Misrepresents Itself
A picture is worth 1,000 words, and the world today is full of symbols. Emojis share paragraphs of information. Logos inform us about what a company represents or does. Shapes and colors share messages of safety or caution on the road. Symbols are everywhere and understanding them brings deeper understanding to the world around us. Medicine is a field of precision, and that is precisely why it is so strange that such confusion exists as to which symbol should represent it.
Leading the Rounds: The Medical Leadership Podcast — “Dr. Brent James on Value-Based Care & The Future of Medicine”
Dr. Brent James was a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Senior Advisor at the Leavitt Group and a Senior Advisor at Health Catalyst, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He holds faculty appointments at the Stanford University School of Medicine and at several other universities. He was formerly the Vice President and Chief Quality Officer at Intermountain Healthcare. In this episode, we discussed his leadership background, value-based medicine, as well as his outlook on the future of medicine. We hope you enjoy this episode of Leading the Rounds.
“Stay Safe and Well”
Engaging strangers with kind eyes rather than tender faces, / Air hugs rather than warm embraces, / Family Zoom calls rather than face-to-face visits.
American Sign Language and the Power of Communication
I began my journey with the Deaf community before coming to medical school starting with a basic American Sign Language class just to learn a few routine signs. I continued with the American Sign Language Club at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, hoping to learn more medical signs for any future interactions with Deaf patients. Through the club, I recently met an incredible four-year-old boy named John at a local community event to meet Peppa Pig.
Buddy
You were my first patient on my first inpatient rotation as a third-year medical student, which meant that I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I was mostly concerned with trying not to faint during presentations on morning rounds. I stared at your bowl of Cheerios, the cereal beginning to turn the skim milk a pale yellow. Your brow furrowed in annoyance behind your thick glasses.
Shut Up and Doctor?
Now, I am a fourth-year medical student standing at the foot of a tall ladder. The hierarchy of medicine requires that I follow some unwritten rules in order to climb. Throughout my training, I have gotten the sense that one of those rules is: avoid trouble, good or bad. Of course, now, doctors are beginning to find their voices through movements like White Coats for Black Lives. But as a young trainee, I sometimes feel the sentiment directed at James in 2018: shut up and doctor.
How CrossFit Prepared Me for Medical School
A few years ago, I found CrossFit. Since then, I have spent a large share of my free time training and improving my health and fitness. As with any sport, there was a large learning curve. However, as I trained, my mind and body adapted. I made strides both athletically and mentally that I never thought were possible. I never imagined that this preparation and development would translate to a seemingly opposing task: medical school.
Writer-in-Training and Columnist
Wayne State University School of Medicine
Caleb Sokolowski is a second-year medical student at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan. In 2018, he graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor of science in Human Biology. Caleb is interested in medical ethics, policy, and education. In his free time, Caleb participates in number of activities including sports, CrossFit, paddle boarding and cycling.
Leading the Rounds: The Medical Leadership Podcast
As physicians, we are immediately thrust into a leadership position from the moment we finish medical school. Despite this, most medical students will obtain little formal leadership training. We seek to improve our leadership abilities as burgeoning physicians. We developed this podcast to challenge ourselves to explore ideas in leadership development and how they apply to medical training. We hope to educate and motivate others to further develop themselves as leaders in healthcare.