Sarayna McGuire is an Emergency Medicine PGY1. She is a former Certified Pharmacy Technician and veteran of the United States Air Force. Sarayna earned her B.S. in Environmental Studies from American Military University. She enjoys traveling, photography, and gardening in her free time.
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?
“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.
Understanding the origins of words is helpful in medicine. “Genu” and “corpus” are Latin for knee and body, respectively. “Hippos” is Greek for “horse” and “kampos” for “sea monster.” (Can you tell I am in a brain sciences block)?
In 1913, nine years before his death, the physician and medical historian Eugene F. Cordell gave his presidential address to the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. His topic was the “The Importance of the Study of the History of Medicine.”
When I tell people I am studying medicine and hope to be a surgeon, there tends to be a general agreement that I have made a good career choice, I have chosen a respected, solid field of work and will be guaranteed a “job for life.”
The argument for wrenches on the path to doctorhood is as follows: if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Students able to memorize the various bacterial growth media will likely remember the drugs to prescribe in an acute myocardial infarction.
First year of medical school: / Don’t remember much. / MD/PhD students, you know what I mean. / Learned how to use a stethoscope.
At first glance, Romée and Veerle appear just typical medical students in Amsterdam like thousands of others. Ask any of their colleagues or friends, however, and they’d tell you that they are anything but.
Contributing Writer
University of Groningen
Haras is a medical student at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
