Tag: medical education

Amy Ho Amy Ho (2 Posts)

Contributing Writer Emeritus

University of Texas Southwestern Medical School

Amy is a Class of 2014 medical student at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX going into Emergency Medicine with a strong interest in health policy. She is on the AMPAC Board of Directors, TEXPAC Board of Directors, and a contributing writer for Motley Fool.




Match Magic: Why the NRMP Match Needs to Disappear

Published by Amy Ho

Becoming a doctor takes time, but those outside of medicine do not always realize how convoluted the process can be. Central to the perversion is the National Resident Matching Program (or “the Match”). After college and the two years of classroom-based training in medical school, students are ushered into clinical training through third year core rotations in predetermined specialties. In the spring of their third year, students must decide on their career specialty, often without …

I Am Present: Medical School in the Digital Age

Published by Eric Ballon-Landa

At any given moment in this hyper-connected era, we are beckoned by our smartphones, iPods, iPads and laptops to participate in the multiple spheres in which we exist.  These “spheres” — our physical surroundings, families and friends, social media, blogs, e-mail — are simultaneously concrete and confabulated, yet they equally contribute to our identity.  Navigating these arenas enriches and edifies our current existence with memories of old friendships and ever-increasing networks of new contacts while …

Medical Illustration: Shadowing an Artist in Medical School

Published by T. N. Diem Vu, MD

Art has been one of my passions ever since I could hold a pencil — an important outlet for expression, relaxation and reflection. However, I never found an intersection between art and medicine until I discovered medical illustration in college. This is the field in which artists take medical school classes alongside medical students to become experts in anatomy, histology and pathology, the field which is responsible for providing the textbook and anatomy atlas illustrations …

Do They Teach Fear in Medical School?

Published by Ajay Koti

Room One Wendy Smith had thinning hair, penciled-in eyebrows, and a frame so thin that you could see, in painstaking detail, bluish-grey veins emanating from beneath her pale skin. Cancer had taken so much from her that she almost didn’t look human. But the feeling in the room was extremely human. Fear — palpable fear. Fear made all the more palpable because this was an aggressive, rare form of cancer. Fear made all the more …

Ultrasound Technology: Anatomy and Pathology Education Come to Life at WVU

Published by Leslie Matthews

For students at West Virginia University School of Medicine, studying anatomy now consists of more than just furiously comparing textbook images to a cadaver. In addition to their traditional dissection-based coursework, they also learn anatomical structures from a living patient using ultrasound technology. Pioneered by Dr. Joseph Minardi, director of the emergency ultrasound fellowship at the WVU School of Medicine, the MD curriculum has begun integrating ultrasound education into all four years of its program. …

Tactics for Efficient Learning in Med School and the Underlying Neurobiology

Published by Ronald Sahyouni

The Neurobiology of Learning With residencies becoming increasingly competitive, medical students today find themselves often juggling far more than simply staying on top of their course load. Students are getting involved in more research, mentorship, volunteering and outreach, leaving them with little time to study and master material outside of class. Furthermore, schools are placing a greater emphasis on small-group learning, podcasts and flipped classroom paradigms that put an even greater onus on students to …

SaveGME: Graduate Medical Education is Imperative for Physician Training, Patient Care and Public Health

Published by Manik Aggarwal

Every current fourth-year medical student in the country marked March 17, 2014 and March 21, 2014 on their calendars a long time ago. The first date tells students if they matched into residency and if they will begin their training program this July. The second date tells students where they will ultimately live, breathe and work for the next three to seven years as a member of the hospital’s housestaff. My personal journey to March …

Ethics in Training: Creating Humanistic Practitioners from Competent Clinicians

Published by Haris Ashraf

Medical training prides itself on being an art, never simply a black-and-white field where answers to increasingly complex health questions are merely algorithmically derived. It follows then that the only way for medical knowledge to transcend this rigid, computational process is through the accumulation of clinical experience, which over enough time should inform our intuition to the point where we become masters of navigating a sea of grays. This archetype is classically understood to be …

Apps for Medical Students on the Go

Published by Valentina Bonev

Advances in technology have not only dramatically changed health care, but have also changed the way we learn medicine. Gone are the days of carrying clunky textbooks. You can also put away your six different highlighters. Why? Because technology has become your new best friend. Having a smartphone—or better, a tablet—on hand has become an especially useful tool for navigating your studies. Here is a guide to some of the apps that I have found …

Examining Altruism in Medical Student Volunteer Work: A Reply to Pham’s Article

Published by Sian Hsiang-Te Tsuei

Author’s note: This article was written by Sian Hsiang-Te Tsuei and Amy Po-Yu Tsai. Pham (2013) questioned medical students’ underlying reason for volunteering to perform physical exams at free clinics and concluded in the article “Volunteering in Medical School: A Waste of Time?” that volunteering will never be a waste of time because medical students matriculate to “improve the quality of life for humankind, to service the underserved and to advocate for our patients who …

Searching for Role Models in Medicine: Where Have All the Giants Gone?

Published by David Gasalberti

Throughout my rotations, I often wondered what it must have been like to train under the tutelage of Michael Debakey, a pioneer in cardiac surgery, or Harvey Cushing, the father of modern neurosurgery. I imagined myself scrutinizing a CT scan (or a plain X-ray in Cushing’s time), having these masters of medicine critique my differential diagnosis or being in the operating theater learning a new operative technique. I tried to imagine the immense satisfaction one …

Medical Students: The Anti-Millionaires

Published by Daniel Coleman

A few months ago, CBS Moneywatch published an article entitled “$1 million mistake: Becoming a doctor.” Aside from the possibility that devoting one’s life to helping others might be considered a mistake, I was struck by the “$1 million” figure. Was it actually that much? I mean, $1 million is a lot of money. When I was younger, millionaires seemed a rarefied breed. They drove expensive cars and had houses with names like “Le Troquet” or “Brandywine Vale.” The …

Daniel Coleman Daniel Coleman (5 Posts)

Medical Student Editor

Georgetown University School of Medicine

Daniel graduated from Tufts University in 2004. His subsequent pursuits included everything from cell cycle research to manufacturing shampoo. Medically, his interests lie in emergency and wilderness medicine, infectious disease, and health care sustainability. Daniel is medical student at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Class of 2017.