Personal Growth (Through Poetics) Between Step 1 and 2
Oh yes, I’m back without attack, like how I was before. / With growing strides and doubt that hides / away from breaking thoughts.
Tag: medical education
Columnist
Michigan State University College of Human Medicine
Hello! I'm Valerie. I'm from the suburbs of Detroit and graduated from Michigan State University in 2009 with my BA in Psychology. I'm currently living in Grand Rapids Michigan with my fiance Adam, where I'm now in my second year of medical school at MSUCHM. I'm the aunt of two little kiddies that I love to death (Asher 3.5 and Shana 1.5) and the proud mama of a silly red-brown dog named Bo. Before starting medical school, I sang in an a cappella group for 3 years, traveled to India, volunteered at a Navajo hospital in New Mexico and many other uninteresting things I won't mention. I still sing as much as I can, love hot vinyasa yoga, hiking, camping and spending time with my family. If I'm not studying, you can probably find me on my couch in sweat pants eating frozen yogurt, watching Modern Family, The Mindy Project or The Goldberg's.
Therapeutic Misadventures
Therapeutic Misadventures catalogs the unanticipated effects of medical school and is meant to provide a sense of the emotional roller coaster that is medical education. It is a peek into what it really feels like to be a medical student and the perpetual challenges that come with that life. Spoiler alert: it's hard.
White Coat Hypertension
The day before I was asked to give this speech, sometime mid-May, I was speaking with a first year student. At the time, I was two weeks shy of completing my third year of medical school — the year of school that you spend the most time in the hospital.
Moment of Connection
Law, medicine, and dentistry — these were the careers that I was constantly exposed to at home. With my father as a practicing lawyer for over 25 years, two of my siblings already qualified as doctors, and the third on course to completing his medical journey, most of my relatives and friends thought medicine or law would be my choice naturally.
Differentials
“From now on,” our deans told us at orientation, “society will see you as a doctor. Sometimes you may not feel like one, but that is what you are becoming. This week marks the beginning of that transition, which will continue in the months and years to come.”
An Apology to Medical Students
Dear medical students, I’m sorry. You had just finished two years of didactic learning and couldn’t wait to feel like a “real” doctor. You were finally starting your clerkships, that is, finally working with patients and getting deep in the trenches.
Interview with Sanjay Sharma, MD, MSc (Epid), MBA
We recently chatted with Sanjay Sharma, MD, MSc (Epid), MBA, professor of ophthalmology at Queen’s University and founder of MEDSKL, about trends in medical education and how MEDSKL can be used to improve your educational experience.
Understanding Our Patients’ Drugs: The Need for a Pharmacy Elective Within Medical School
I spent one year working full-time as a pharmacy technician at a high-volume community pharmacy prior to entering medical school. Besides learning the intricacies of billing and the dispensing process, I was also granted access into a world few physicians are aware of.
Beyond Illness Roundtables: Social Justice and Clinicians of the 21st Century
In promoting health justice, our team at Systemic Disease believes it is vital to recognize the connection between bias and adverse health outcomes. We utilized a discussion model provided by In-Training’s Beyond Illness Roundtable toolkit to guide a discussion on such interactions that exist across all interprofessional relationships and those that may cloud, strain and negatively impact individuals from teaching, learning and, above all, healing.
What Does It Mean Now?
And what does it mean now? To be accepted? To be initiated, congratulated and nudged toward a curriculum made jokingly infamous by well-meaning administrators and by a culture which treats such consuming endeavors as medical school like abstract forms of busyness?
They Said, “Third Year Is Better,” But It Wasn’t Nearly Good Enough
Everyone says that medical school gets better, especially during third year. The traditional four-year curriculum covers the basic sciences in the classroom for the first two years. Then suddenly, third year plunges us into clinical rotations in the hospital, where we’ve all dreamed of working for so long.
(To) Where Matters: An App Dedicated to Improving the Medical School and Residency Selection Process
When pre-med and medical students think about where to attend school or where to apply for residency opportunities, they also undoubtedly consider the hard work, dedication and sacrifices required along the way. But how often are they thinking about location in this process?
The Measure of a Medical Education: An Epilogue
“What’s the matter with everybody?” asked Mrs. Palmer, a hopelessly demented woman with water wells for eyes. She had just endured her third consecutive tongue-lashing by the bulldog masquerading as a nurse anesthetist.
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida
Ajay is a pediatric resident and a Class of 2017 graduate of the SELECT MD program at the University of South Florida. He is passionate about delivering primary care to underserved populations—specifically, low-income and homeless patients in urban centers. Ajay will be specializing in pediatrics, with a particular interest in child maltreatment.
M.D. or Bust
Numerous studies have documented that medical students lose empathy during clinical years, becoming jaded and pessimistic. This has been linked not only to diminished enjoyment of our work, but also to worse patient outcomes. My goal is to sustain the humanistic values that drive so many of us to medicine, so that, instead of being quelled by cynicism, our idealism can be refined by wisdom.
