Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Allison Chin is a fourth-year medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, FL in the class of 2023. In 2017, she graduated from the University of Miami with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and nutrition, along with minors in chemistry, psychology and art. She was inducted in the Arnold P. Gold Humanism Society and awarded the President Volunteer Service Award and the Florida Board of Medicine Medical Student Recognition Award in 2022. She enjoys custom card making, yoga, painting, and discovering new red wines and dark chocolate in her free time. After graduating medical school, Allison would like to pursue a career in Internal Medicine.
During the last week of my clinical rotation in family medicine, my attending advised me and the accompanying medical student that going forward, the health providers of the clinic must limit their scope of care for patients who present for annual examinations.
This period of healing set Lori on a long road that was paved with pain. She lived in chronic pain from the fistula. While her physicians delicately weighed her safety with pain relief, she learned to balance both patience and uncertainty.
Logan’s healing was in his death. Mine was in a game of Monopoly.
As a high school volunteer in my local hospital’s oncology unit, I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach every time I saw the bright “Contact Precautions” sign on the door. I would begrudgingly don a flimsy plastic gown, fix a tight surgical mask around my ears, snap on a pair of gloves and proceed into the patient’s room.
It is morning outside, the sun barely kissing the horizon. The curtains have been drawn in an attempt to force any lick of light from the room. But one slim shard cuts through the drapes, illuminating John’s face.
Like many medical students, I was vastly underprepared for the emotional turmoil that the nature of the third year of medical school can create.
Over the next few days, workup revealed she was experiencing paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration, a manifestation of her occult cancer. In a matter of three days, a patient who had come in for seemingly benign constipation was told she had metastatic lung cancer.
After our first week on clinical rotations, my third-year medical student colleagues laughed about the silly and awkward things that made their first days hard. Someone was shunned for bumping into the sterile field during their first operation. Someone else couldn’t figure out the scrub machines and was stuck mismatching for the day.
When I was growing up, I used to love a particular series of video games called Trauma Center. In 2010, they released a version called Trauma Team where you got to play as various medical specialists, one of whom was simply considered a “Diagnostician.” Dr. Gabriel Cunningham’s “cases” were some of the most challenging because you were presented with an array of symptoms, imaging, and lab work and started ruling in or ruling out diagnoses until you got the right answer.
It was my third day on my home dermatology elective, and I boldly volunteered to see a patient by myself. As a third-year medical student strongly considering dermatology for my future career, I had studied for weeks for this rotation, hoping to make an impression as a confident, knowledgeable and reliable doctor-in-training. Usually, medical students shadow for two weeks before seeing patients on their own, but I was eager to be more independent. This was my chance to demonstrate everything I was working toward.
“You know, not all of us can be small,” the patient, a well-appearing woman in moderate anxious distress, said as she motioned with her hands and rolled her eyes towards me. “It’s disgusting,” she added.
Third-year rotations forced me to reckon with my emotional capacity as a human and future physician. With each patient encounter, I had to decide whether my skin was too thick or too thin.
Contributing Writer
McGovern Medical School
Fatema is a fourth-year medical student at McGovern Medical School, part of the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. In 2019, she graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science in nutrition and a minor in Medicine & Society. After graduating from medical school, Fatema plans to promote preventative care and health equity by pursuing a career in family medicine.
