History of Present Illness — A Medical School Short Horror Film
A first-year medical student’s stress and anxiety begin to take physical form as she navigates her first year of medical school.
Tag: medical student wellness
Contributing Writer
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
Phillip Luis Anjum, MD, is a second year resident at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, and a graduate of the Ohio State University School of Medicine. His interests including photography/filmmaking, cooking/culinary medicine, and traveling. He plans to pursue a career in primary care.
“Welcome to Medicine”
You don’t have to sit in silence and painfully nod along with an attending’s racist, misogynistic lectures because you’re their medical student. You don’t need to pick the skin off your cuticles to stop yourself from replying. You don’t need to learn how to hide your grimaces behind your mask because you know you’ll have to listen to them attack your identity for the next several weeks.
Plight of M2 Year
While it is easy to feel stuck and unhappy in this current life-box, I recognize that we must take a few deep breaths and understand that this too shall pass. And that this did pass for all the physicians before us and will pass for all the physicians after us. And we will all get past this together.
Lessons From Quarantine
I was anxious because I was used to moving at such a fast pace that slamming on the breaks gave me whiplash. I was desperate for things to do because I had forgotten how to slow down and relax — how to just be. Slowly, I began to see the opportunity that quarantine had presented me with.
A Defense of My Suicidal Peers
A medical student, to whom I will refer as X, posted on their social media page they were going to kill themselves. Their letter was direct, raw and, as many suicide notes tend to be, apologetic. They explained they felt they no longer had the strength to keep fighting; it was simply “time for them to go.”
Medical Students Do Not Owe You Their Trauma
Interviewers who ask these questions in a professional setting typically consider these issues to be academic — purely topics for discussion that might provide useful insight into the way the applicant views the world. But for applicants who have been affected, these issues are not merely academic and their discussion can invoke significant emotional turmoil. So before we continue to tacitly accept this shift in interviewing, it is important to consider its purpose and impact on those being interviewed.
Emergence or Submersion? Productivity During COVID-19
It feels preemptive to discuss emergence while sitting in the living room where I’ve spent 15 hours a day for the past month — bradycardic afternoons mirroring the day prior. Yet each day the sun emerges, and we along with it, venturing out onto balconies and porches. As medical students, we take our pro re nata walks and remember to cross the street so our paths don’t intersect those of our neighbors.
Silver Lining
The world is quarantined, but we have learned to be human again. Rather than tirelessly working or studying, we are forced to engage with one another in meaningful ways. We find novel alternatives to maintain relationships with those who mean the most to us during this daunting time with no foreseeable end.
Isolation Treatment
I am okay being alone; it’s not hard to do. / For other people, they can’t do it as if they were left scarred anew. / The trick is to keep your mind busy.
Reimagining Quarantine: Surviving Medical School at Home
Back in late March, I was a medical student in D.C. studying for exams. Today, I am a 23-year-old living with my parents again. Despite being in school 5+ hours away, my bedroom in upstate New York has become my new classroom. Being at home has its perks: I get food from my mom again, and I can wear pajamas all day if I wanted to (not that I actually do that). However, there are many things that don’t feel right about being a medical student who has no connection to the medical world right now.
Creating Community: A Conversation with Megha Patel, the first Multicultural Coordinator at CMED
After our conversation, I’ve been thinking a lot about creating community. As students of color, especially in areas with low diversity, we create our communities of allies with other students of color or students who are open-minded and willing to learn. For students who come from places with established diversity, the transition to creating communities of their own can be a challenge.
Social Distancing Versus Social Isolation
The same four walls surround us for hours on end while we try to marry the responsibilities of medical education with those of social distancing. While these new restrictions may at first seem conducive to much desired additional study time, gym closures and social gathering restrictions only deepen the isolation already felt by so many medical students.
Contributing Writer
Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
Emma is a fourth-year medical student at Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine in Las Cruces, NM class of 2022. In 2016, she graduated from The University of New Mexico with a Bachelor of Science in medical laboratory sciences. Prior to beginning her formal graduate medical education, she worked as a Medical Laboratory Scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. She loves her rambunctious dogs and enjoys coaching soccer, running, traveling, cooking and reading in her free time. In the future, Emma would like to pursue a career in Internal Medicine.