Tag: medical education

Farrah Fong Farrah Fong (1 Posts)

Contributing Writer Emeritus

West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine

Farrah Fong is in the Class of 2016 at the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine. She is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, double-majored in Exercise Biology and Music Performance (Piano) at UC Davis, and completed her graduate studies at Rutgers Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. She is a student writer for The DO, and a co-founder of FMStudent, a guide and resource page for third and fourth-year medical students interested in family medicine. Her hobbies outside of school include music, powerlifting, dancing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, cooking, and writing. She will be completing her Family Medicine residency at Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.




Why Would Anyone Choose Family Medicine?

Published by Farrah Fong

Throughout medical school and especially during our clinical rotations, students are often told to keep an open mind about choosing a specialty. This is sound advice, especially since many people change their minds once they are exposed to other fields. However, that does not mean that all specialties are perceived as equal — even in a primary-care focused medical school, third-year medical students often run into prejudice against FM. Worse, they may run into stereotypes about family med which could be enough to sway them away from the specialty they would really love.

The Dangerous Devolution of Physicians into Technicians

Published by Amanda King

With more applicants than ever, and a relatively static number of medical school and residency spots, there has been an increase in the use of metrics such as standardized test scores, GPAs and research publications to differentiate between applicants. Unfortunately, an emphasis on the unquantifiable attributes of physicians — the qualities that actually differentiate great clinicians from good ones — seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Can We Talk About it Now? Mistreatment of Women in Medical Education

Published by Abraham Khan

In light of this recent occasion, I would like to draw attention to the sexual harassment of a particularly vulnerable population that is a result of a unique power dynamic: they have no income, they have amassed significant debt and they depend on the subjective opinion of their abusers for validation of their work. Most frustrating, is that many of the corrective actions taken over the last 25 years have had a limited effect on changing this specific culture of abuse. This specific population is medical students.

Is it Time to #endstep2cs? An Interview with the Initiative Founder and a USMLE Representative

Published by Joe Ladowski

In March 2016, six medical students at Harvard Medical School launched #endstep2cs, an initiative aimed to garner support for the termination of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 2 Clinical Skills (CS) that is currently administered to medical students prior to graduation. This past week, we talked with Christopher Henderson, one of the organization founders, and Dr. Peter Katsufrakis, the senior vice president for assessment programs at the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), to discuss the faults and merits of both the CS exam and the student-led initiative to end it.

The Neglected Importance of Relative Inequality in Fighting For Better Health

Published by Alexander Chaitoff

As future physicians, understanding the consequences of absolute resource levels impact health is critical. A physician who advises a better diet to somebody without the ability to act on that advice is of little more use than the physician who prescribes an imaginary medication. However, institutes of medical education do a disservice to their students by keeping the conversation so narrow. Medical schools must begin to more fully teach how relative inequality impacts health.

Seeing Past the Unicorns In Medicine, by Valencia Walker, MD

Published by Valencia Walker, MD

As an “underrepresented minority” in medicine, my personal experiences of mistreatment while navigating the challenges of pursuing this career are mostly invisible to the rest of society, but I know that they are far from mythical or unique. In fact, my experiences harmonize perfectly with the tales of so many African-American physicians before me and even in the accounts of the students I currently mentor. Everyone asks, “Aren’t things different now for African-Americans?” Yes. But, are they better? Sadly, not exactly.

A Critique of Cultural Competency in Health Care

Published by Jennifer Tsai

The cultural competency framework that has become the mainstay of medical education is often times employed in incredibly reductionist ways. It seems to propose that exposing physicians to homogenized, static and packaged ideas of culture will aid them in estimating patient behavior, preference or response in the clinic, thereby diminishing health care inequality. Training like this paves the way for even well-intentioned student-doctors to be explicitly ignorant under the auspices of clinical benefit. It spoils the good intent to create better patient outcomes by legitimizing the validity of stereotypes and the development of physician bias.

Is Medical Humanism a Humanism?

Published by Steven Lange

It is 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, and 250 medical students are filing into the lecture hall to listen to a lecture on health care and society. The chatter is not one of excitement, but of disconcertment. Many students complain that their time would be better spent studying hematology. These are not uncaring students who disavow the needs of the disabled, but a generation that demonstrates a palpable reaction to the way that medicine is taught. We may be quick to fault them for their alarming aversion to a discussion on ethics, but we must also consider: is ethics meant to be force-fed?

When to Say “No”: Yes, It Gets Messy

Published by Erin Ayala

Four years. I had gone four years without crying in a faculty member’s or an advisor’s office. And there I was, sobbing all over myself, as I tried to explain the situation. A couple of days prior, I received a terse email from the training director, saying I needed to come in to meet with her. She was not happy with my most recent feat as a doctoral student.

Joniqua Ceasar Joniqua Ceasar (5 Posts)

Contributing Writer

Baylor College of Medicine

Joniqua Ceasar is a member of Baylor College of Medicine's Class of 2020. She is passionate about social justice within medicine and plans to engage in a career of public health. When she isn't in the hospital, you can find her working on a DIY craft project, tweeting via @rxforjustice, or snapping photos on her DSLR.