Contributing Writer
Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine
I am a Class of 2018 medical student at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 2013 with a degree in biomedical engineering. In my spare time, I enjoy playing basketball, running, and swimming.
I am an engineering graduate. My rigorous education has taught me that when presented with a problem, I should systematically narrow down solutions to figure out the best possible one. During my second week of medical school I had my first standardized patient encounter. I felt very pleased with myself when I walked out the door after having asked the patient specific questions about her foot pain and been rewarded with the details of her worries.
A woman once told me that babies cry at the slightest breeze because that is the greatest level of discomfort that they have yet experienced in their short lives. It is a reminder that we can persevere through life’s tribulations. That we grow from adversity. That new challenges make past trials smaller. That this, too, shall pass.
I had just finished my second test in medical school. I flopped down next to a fellow student I met barely a month ago, exasperated and on the verge of tears. I was exhausted and quickly becoming emotional, realizing I was too uncertain about a (large) handful of those musculoskeletal questions.
Sitting across the table from me was a woman with four children, whose hesitancy towards their foreign doctor mirrored my own. I still wonder sometimes how I ended up in that tiny cinderblock-and-corrugated-metal church in Bolivia, not even finished with my first year of medical school. At the time, I felt frantic.
He and I are early, and we are the only ones in the room. I sit in an office chair — the kind that swivels — around a long, industrial-looking table with another ten chairs, and I watch him as he nods, his eyes closed, to music playing through his headphones.
It was a night of restless dreams. So when my phone blinked to life at 1:42 a.m., my eyes snapped wide open. [ALERT] **VDEM** FRONT ROYAL SAR. VDEM is the Virginia Department of Emergency Management, the state authority in charge of all emergency responses, including incidents involving missing persons. In those situations, VDEM sends out an alert to local search and rescue groups like the one I had just joined.
“Why did you want to become a doctor?” I hate that question. It makes me cringe every time I hear it. Honestly, I went into medicine because my parents wanted me to. But that answer sounds mildly insufficient, so I feel obliged to give my customary “I love science and I want to help people” reply.
Barely into my second year of medical school, I already have a reputation — I love asking the uncomfortable stuff. Social history, sex, drugs, alcohol, I want to know it all. At first, it was just because that section randomly fell on me during small group sessions or standardized patient encounters. Then, I began to volunteer, or be volunteered. “Mariya loves the dirt,” my classmates say. Without saying, I always approach this section of the …
Now six months away from graduating from medical school, I’ve started to reflect on the patients who hold a special place in my heart and memories, who taught me invaluable life lessons. We were in the assisted-living home of an elderly couple who had agreed to meet with us so we could practice our interviewing skills as first-year medical students. The old woman was sitting in a reclining armchair, leaning back. She had multiple medical problems, …
My initial interest in medicine came from an unlikely source, a stranger I will presumably never meet again. I was volunteering with one of the nurses at a local Healthcare for the Homeless clinic during my first year of college. From my seat in the corner, I noticed with some apprehension a young man whose body was covered with tattoos. Two tattoos in particular caught my attention. The first was on his neck: a five-point crown …
Straight arms. Lock elbows. Depress three to five centimeters down into the chest. Stay perpendicular to sternum. Keep rhythm. Do not relent. “If you don’t break ribs, you’re not doing it right,” my classmate jokes. He must know — he is one of three experienced paramedics in the classroom. He has seen this all before. “There is a high risk, during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, that the ribs will be broken.” Our training pamphlet makes it clear. …
I walk around, wide-eyed yet confused. It seems so different. I always thought I was too objective for my art friends and too subjective for my science friends. But was that really an accurate reflection of my own personality? Medicine is about reductionism, objectivity and straightforwardness. In medical school, I’m learning a method of communication in which empathy is taught as a route to finding out more about a patient; it’s conveniently called the patient-centered …
Contributing Writer
Drexel University College of Medicine
Joshua is a Class of 2018 medical student at Drexel University College of Medicine.
