Contributing Writer
Sidney Kimmel Medical College
Adam Barsouk is currently a medical student at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Jefferson University. He studied pre-medicine, health policy and anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. As a son of Soviet Jewish escapees, Adam values the opportunity and freedom that America has provided his family, and as a current cancer researcher at the University of Pittsburgh and an aspiring physician, hopes to share this commitment by liberating the infirm from the chains of chronic disease and suffering. Adam speaks 6 languages, has visited over 30 countries, and enjoys recounting his experiences while also learning anything he can from the people and places around him.
When Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State football coach, was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse, few could foresee that he was about to hurt thousands of students, future physicians and aspiring scientists across the nation.
Oh yes, I’m back without attack, like how I was before. / With growing strides and doubt that hides / away from breaking thoughts.
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.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
Guest Writer
(To) Where Matters
Patterns and geography have always excited Sarah, which is why she has dedicated her career to being an expert in spatial data analysis. For Sarah, (To) is the ability to help others understand the power of geography, drive them to achieve personal growth through the intersection of prioritization and opportunity, and help solve a challenge we all face—achieving the best version of ourself, no matter where we are.
