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.
How can doctors-in-training protect themselves from the competitiveness and negativity often fostered in medical school? Roma, a fourth-year medical student at Jefferson pursuing a career in family medicine, describes how she shifted her goal from getting good grades to fostering strong relationships with patients.
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.
Editor’s note: This article is in response to “From the Editorial Board: Empathy Decline in Medical Education.” I’m going to be an emergency medicine physician, and my medical school career has spanned delivering babies and telling a family their loved one was dying. I’ve acquired a veneer of cynicism for my colleagues, and a layer of emotional armor. It’s that emotional armor that lets me walk away after a patient I’ve been performing CPR on dies, and be able to go to the next room.
There is a well studied phenomenon in medical education: student physicians begin to burn out out early. According to several multi-center studies, burnout occurs in roughly 50 percent of students before they even earn their medical degrees. Personally, this manifests in the fading width of the bright smiles we adorned during our white coat ceremonies while our teeth begin to change to a color that only coffee-executives could be proud of. In short, we begin to care less.
In Chinese, the term for doctor is yi sheng, which roughly translates into “medicate to life.” From this interpretation, the mission of a physician is to restore livelihood to patients, whether in the literal or in the metaphorical “wholesomeness of life” sense. While this may seem intuitive, the ingredients of “quality of life” and “satisfactory care” are much less clear and much more complex.
Photography taught me how to see. It taught me to listen using my eyes, rather than my ears alone. This is something that I have carried with me throughout the beginning of medical school. Though some people assume that the arts and the sciences do not mix, photography has actually informed how I envision my work as a physician.
I’ve realized recently that there are a few things about which medical school teaches you nothing. There’s the fabled four-year curriculum that all neophytes believe will make them into educated, caring, considerate and capable physicians. And then there’s the reality that most of what it is to really be a physician is learned in the “unwritten curriculum,” (…)
The first two years of medical school, for most students, consist mainly of studying from books, lectures, notes and papers. If a student is having trouble understanding the transporters in the kidney, they can read their notes or review the lecture. Later on in medical school, students spend more time on clinical clerkships. If on a rotation a student is told they need to work on their physical exam skills, they can go to the library and check out a book on physical diagnosis. When a lab result comes back on a patient that may be confusing, a student can quickly look it up on the internet.
During morning rounds, the resident and I stopped by our young patient’s room. He was technically five weeks old, but was born five weeks prematurely, so all in all, he was delightfully newborn-sized. The nurse was sitting in a recliner, holding him. He was well enough to be held. We finished rounds, ate breakfast, and headed to the OR. Our work unexpectedly finished early for the day, and I was free to go. Instead of immediately leaving the hospital, I headed back to our young patient’s room.
How can doctors-in-training incorporate nutrition in their delivery of health care? Anne, an extended fourth-year medical student planning a career in integrative family medicine, shares her dream to centralize healthy nutrition in medical practice. She also describes her nutrition research that examines the effects of an anti-inflammatory diet for Crohn’s disease patients.
She asked me if I was from New York. I told her I wasn’t. I was from California, actually, but enjoying myself in New York City while I was here. I asked her where she grew up. She said Brooklyn. She asked to see my referral card. I asked her to clarify. She said she wanted to see my referral card. For coming here. And did the super know I was here? Where was my card?
Columnist
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Katie is a Class of 2016 student at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.
Pleural Space
Pleural Space looks at the experiential curriculum of medical school, the many things that are taught and learned that aren’t listed in a syllabus.
