Contributing Writer
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Azraa is a third year medical student at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. In 2018, she graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Prior to medical school, she was a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group, where she worked on projects in medical devices, value-based health care, and artificial intelligence use in drug discovery. She enjoys traveling, running, and hiking in her free time. In the future, Azraa would like to pursue a career in surgery.
One crisp Sunday morning in October, I arrive at the community free clinic to find four student volunteers — two of whom are in their third month of medical school like I am — and one attending physician. As usual, we are overbooked.
Awareness of mental health and burnout concerns amongst physicians is simply insufficient; there is a dearth in actionable guidelines for training programs and medical schools to better medical student wellbeing.
The interviewer smiled, gave a vague answer and followed it with a diatribe about how present-day residents have it so “easy.” How his generation had to “walk through feet and feet of snow” to get to work and how work hour restrictions did not exist. Caught off guard, I wondered what sparked such an emotional response to a common interview question.
Blue, white, red, yellow, pink, brown. These are the colors of the ties and strips of fabric around the scrub pants and tops indicating their size. At the start of medical school, I would squeeze into a red top and red pants: these were the larges.
During my Step 1 dedicated study period, I remember looking at these visual comparisons of an early version of First Aid and the most recent edition and feeling righteous indignation bubble up inside me. The former was thin and worn and tattered while the latter was thick, hefty, solid. Hundreds of pages longer, the newest edition felt impenetrable and impossible to commit to memory, expanding yearly with new minutiae to scrutinize.
I came across a photo on social media of some classmates that appeared almost identical to another one I had seen months ago — beaming medical students crowded together against a brick wall of a campus apartment. Déjà vu. But there was one difference. Nearly all the students in this picture were white, whereas all the students in the older picture were non-white.
Humor can be a double-edged sword; when used inappropriately in the workplace, it can taint interactions between health care providers and detract from professionalism.
Making the choice to study medicine in my homeland is a momentous undertaking, with a surrounding fragile health system deficient of medical supplies and in shortage of expertise. Through this series of articles, I will share my experiences and perspectives on being a medical student in Palestine.
What is the recipe that makes an ideal medical student? Are each of us the summation of perfectly measured ingredients? Are we all weighed to the gram, set to proof until we rise just enough and gently set to bake?
2020 was a tough year for all of us (and 2021, and 2022…), but it brought me closer to the medical humanities. The pandemic was the reason that I began to write.
To fully capture the breadth of medical humanities is simply not possible. In fact, it is all too easy for the medical community to lack an appreciation for all of the ways that the humanities not only complement, but enhance medicine. Medicine — a field so biological and chemical — is often associated with far more rigidity than where the humanities permits the mind to go.
As she closed the door behind her, the palliative care geriatrician whom I (Meghan) was shadowing turned and said, “Remember, there are no difficult patients – just difficult situations.” We walked to our next patient, Mrs. C, who was suffering from congestive heart failure. All cures had been exhausted and she was tired of being at the hospital but was scared to enter hospice care. The doctor clasped hands with Mrs. C and explained that starting hospice did not mean giving up – it meant living life on her own terms in the time that was left. After these discussions, Mrs. C appeared more at ease and decided to pursue hospice care at her home.
Contributing Writer
University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston
Meghan is a first year medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas class of 2025. In 2021, she graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in neuroscience through the Dean's Scholars Honors Program. She enjoys trying new foods, thrift shopping, and going down Internet rabbit holes in her spare time. In the future, Meghan would like to pursue a career in psychiatry.
