Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus
University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute
Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, she spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
Before my year abroad, I decided to pursue a masters of public health at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. During the weeklong MPH orientation last fall, we had an eight-hour mandatory session on cultural awareness, which included drawing our cultures with crayons on blank sheets of paper and sharing them with the group. Throughout the day, one of the students kept emphasizing how much she has been grappling with her white privilege lately. At the time, I had trouble appreciating what she was referring to, but after almost four months in Africa, my “whiteness” is part of my daily thoughts.
It is 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, and 250 medical students are filing into the lecture hall to listen to a lecture on health care and society. The chatter is not one of excitement, but of disconcertment. Many students complain that their time would be better spent studying hematology. These are not uncaring students who disavow the needs of the disabled, but a generation that demonstrates a palpable reaction to the way that medicine is taught. We may be quick to fault them for their alarming aversion to a discussion on ethics, but we must also consider: is ethics meant to be force-fed?
“When I was in Laredo, I studied cello when I was in undergrad. My ultimate goal with the cello I guess “professionally” was to play cello with the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra, which I did in April of my senior year. It was a huge deal for me. Since I was really young I always wanted to play with them — [it was] definitely my ultimate goal in music.”
Few doctors in the modern era have established themselves so securely as both doctor and writer as to be easily recognized in both circles; this is perhaps because of the difficult and time-demanding nature of both careers. One notable exception is Dr. Atul Gawande, a renowned general surgeon in Boston, MA, who also happens to be a widely published and well-known author of several books. In his most recent book, “Being Mortal,” it is clear that he has grown, not only as a writer, but as a doctor and a human being as well – which, after all, is what this book is all about.
One of my housemates and I decided early on in my time in Malawi that we needed a code word that would mean, “Austin, stop worrying about money and schedules. Just enjoy the experience and let go.” We decided that “chocolate chips” would be our secret phrase for capturing this sentiment. That way, regardless of the social situation, my housemate could remind me to let go of control and just be.
How can doctors-in-training take advantage of the distinct liberty they have to bond the patient Stephan, a fourth-year medical student in Cincinnati when interviewed and now an ophthalmology resident, reflects on how the art of connecting deeply with patients is not prioritized — but this can be remedied. He tells a story about a patient he met on his internal medicine rotation that illustrates how medical students are in a unique position to cultivate relationships in health care.
Happy New Year! We hope you all had an enjoyable holiday with friends and family as we say goodbye to the dusty, long hours of 2015 and welcome the shiny, new year of 2016. As we begin our fourth year of existence, we would like to take a moment to express our deepest gratitude to all of you — our loyal readers and writers who provide lifeblood to the corpus that is in-Training.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
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.
December 10, 2015 marks the one-year anniversary of the inception of White Coats for Black Lives, a national organization of medical students that aims to eliminate racial bias and racism in the practice of medicine — as they are threats to the health and well-being of people of color.
Today is International Human Rights Day and the one-year anniversary of last year’s national White Coat Die-In to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The coordinated die-in protests drew national attention highlighting racism as a public health issue. Across the nation today, silent protests at medical schools in New York, Philadelphia, Houston and San Francisco call on medical schools and academic medical centers to move beyond mission statements and slogans in their efforts to promote racial justice.
Contributing Writer
University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine
Melissa Palma is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Iowa who recently matched to the Greater Lawrence Family Medicine Residency. When not in the hospital, you can find her studying or reading non-fiction while nursing a taro boba tea.
The Aesculapian Advocate
A column reflecting on the privileges and responsibilities we have as physicians-in-training to advocate for those who do not have the power to do so themselves. Devoted to issues of social justice and health equity, this column hopes to spark conversations and inspire action within each reader's community at large.
