Contributing Writer
Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth
Sylvia Guerra is a fourth-year medical student at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH. Prior to beginning her career in medicine, she completed her undergraduate degree in religion at the University of Rochester and her Master of Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. She is interested in pursuing a career in general surgery. She is also interested in the intersection of medical education and health equity and hopes to make this a central part of her surgical career. She lives in White River Junction, Vermont with her partner, their two cats, and eight chickens.
I was anxious because I was used to moving at such a fast pace that slamming on the breaks gave me whiplash. I was desperate for things to do because I had forgotten how to slow down and relax — how to just be. Slowly, I began to see the opportunity that quarantine had presented me with.
I knew I moved through these spaces easily for many reasons, but being White is a big one that needs to be said out loud. And when you look and feel more comfortable in a space, it is easier to perform “well,” or to sound confident. This is directly related to what academic medicine characterizes as “objective” evaluations of students, and there is data to support this.
I applied to medical school twice. In retrospect, I was unsuccessful the first time for a few reasons: my timing was terrible, I had too much humility about my achievements and I didn’t ask for enough opinions about my application from people who were rooting for me. My trauma was also too raw and recent to write in a way for strangers to understand.
I am calling for international solidarity and aid for Yemenis who are currently living in the worst conditions imaginable without clean water, food or shelter. Today in Yemen, there is war, an economic crisis, cholera outbreaks, the Chikungunya virus and COVID-19, all in the same country.
A medical student, to whom I will refer as X, posted on their social media page they were going to kill themselves. Their letter was direct, raw and, as many suicide notes tend to be, apologetic. They explained they felt they no longer had the strength to keep fighting; it was simply “time for them to go.”
I agree that protesting is best done in peace, / But wasn’t that tried by taking a knee? / Or hashtags that said Black Lives Matter, / And praying that change would come with the chatter.
On June 12, the Trump administration issued a Department of Health and Human Services rule that eliminated the protections transgender patients had under the Obama administration from discrimination by doctors, health care providers and hospitals. A few days later, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, which stated that LGBTQ individuals could not be discriminated against in the workplace.
“Defund the police” has become one of the slogans of the protests shaking our nation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. But what does this term truly mean, and could defunding the police be helpful for both the police and the health care community?
Interviewers who ask these questions in a professional setting typically consider these issues to be academic — purely topics for discussion that might provide useful insight into the way the applicant views the world. But for applicants who have been affected, these issues are not merely academic and their discussion can invoke significant emotional turmoil. So before we continue to tacitly accept this shift in interviewing, it is important to consider its purpose and impact on those being interviewed.
Two years of intense studying should have culminated in a feeling of strength. I ended my second year of medical school thinking I was now prepared to do anything. I was excited to be a problem-solver, armed with the mental acuity to recognize diseases from A to Z, ready to proceed with the next step in my clinical training. Now, in my third year, it is finally time to act like a real doctor. But our superiors treat us like their personal assistants.
“Could you please hand Eric the needle driver?” As the scrub tech loaded up that blessed golden tool, I knew that I had just ascended within the realm of surgery.
In a typical year, medical students have to pass this one final patient actor bonanza before they can become doctors. Like all other USMLE exams, Step 2 CS is eight hours long. However, this is the only Step exam that isn’t administered on a computer; rather, it’s offered at just five centers in the country, located in Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, and Los Angeles.
Contributing Writer
Standford University School of Medicine
Orly Farber is a fourth-year medical student class of 2021 at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. She graduated from the University of Chicago in 2015 with a BA in comparative human development, and then spent two years working in an allergy lab at the National Institutes of Health. In her free time, Orly enjoys running in the nearby foothills and cooking. She plans to pursue a career in surgery this coming year.
