Columnist Emeritus and in-Training Staff Member
Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at The University of Western Ontario
Hey, I'm Jimmy, I'm a member of the Class of 2015 at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry located in the University of Western Ontario. I'm originally from Vancouver, and did my undergrad at UBC in physiology and commerce. I think these bios are a bit too short to really paint an accurate picture so find me on Twitter (@Jimmy_Yan) and we can connect that way!
A Fly on the Ward
The clerkship experience can be the definition of tumultuous. As we're suddenly tossed into the wards, it's easy to become caught up in the shuffle as we move through our service rotation. These posts try to take a step back and become "a fly on the wall" observing and reflecting on the overall movement through clerkships.
“He always does this, it’s unbelievable!” My preceptor’s voice was unmistakable. We had just finished our first case and I had momentarily left to get some coffee. “This is getting unacceptable, someone needs to bring this up to the board!” I had never seen him so worked up after having worked with him over the course of the week.
In the rest of the house, the noise of the party is deafening: the clink of glasses, the sizzle of burgers on the grill, the excited cries of relatives reunited after long absences. But in the bright light of the kitchen, Mark is talking to me without sound. He presses his right hand over his left then moves up its length, separating his thumb from the rest of his fingers as he goes replicating the open and shut motions of a jaw. “This is the sign for cancer,” he says.
A mere five weeks into my third year of medical school, I met a patient who would leave an indelible mark. Jose was a Hispanic man that teetered between overweight and obese; I am a tall, medium-build Chinese-American who was thin in high school. He struggled with depression during 40 odd years of life; my biggest worry growing up was excelling on the competitive piano circuit. He spoke of a family rife with discord and unhappiness; my family is intact and supportive. He dropped out of college; I want to stay in school forever. He ate rice and tortillas; I ate rice and tofu. We were different but for a moment, our lives intersected.
Congratulations! You’ve made it to the clinical portion of medical school. Now you’ll work alongside interns, residents, attendings, pharmacists, social workers, and a myriad of other health care workers to provide quality care for your patients. As a resident, I’ve seen medical and PA students struggle with feelings of anxiety, incompetence and disorganization. They are excellent with patients, but often have difficulty with team dynamics and understanding their roles as clinical students. Here are some tips for success modeled after Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”
I will admit to being an “OR avoider” — albeit, one who is certainly in awe of the stylized pageantry of sterile armor adornment. In the operating room, safe spaces are demarcated by mere inches. Rest your hand beyond the thresholds monitored by the scrub techs and you are deemed a threat to a clean procedure. Gesturing in ways that are otherwise socially advantageous gives new territory to harmful bacteria that threaten favorable outcomes. As third-year medical …
On a Saturday morning at one of our local safety net clinics, where third-year medical students see patients independently and then present to the supervising attending, a man in his 60s arrived to talk about some lab results he had received and what they meant. This man, Mr. S, had many medical problems, including hypertension, COPD, chronic kidney disease and newly diagnosed diabetes. He came to the office that day wanting to know why he had …
Once upon a time, in a rural hospital far, far away, a med student began her clerkship. At the University of British Columbia, the Integrated Community Clerkship (ICC) provides an opportunity to spend the first clinical year of medical school in a hospital in rural British Columbia rather than a large academic center. The intent is to provide hands-on education and to encourage physicians to one day return to serve a rural community. Applying to the ICC was …
I had experienced codes before. Prior to entering medical school, I had worked as an emergency room scribe, charting patient encounters as they unfolded. I considered myself familiar with a code’s whirlwind of action, always one step away from the true pandemonium. After all, I had stood on its borders, plucking shouted orders and silent actions from the maelstrom, weaving them into a coherent, documented clinical picture. Naïve, and all too eager to count at …
One of the biggest challenges medical students face is finding their voice: with their medical team, with the hospital staff, with patients, and with their chosen specialty. As a medical student, you want to be proactive, to advocate for the patient, and to learn the best management techniques. But ‘proactive’ for one physician can easily be ‘annoying’ for another physician. Likewise, what can be viewed as ‘lack of initiative’ by one physician is ‘eager to …
It is the end of the day. I know this not because I can see the color of the sky, but because the hands of the clock tell me so. My shins ache. My eyelids droop. From an unknown place above, I watch myself join a whirlpool of patients circling the nurses’ desk. I watch as my last my last drop of energy slips out of my body and down the drain. I wonder, “Is …
Let me start off by saying that I don’t think of myself as a hardcore cyclist: I don’t own multiple bikes, I am not on Strava, and I don’t own a single cycling kit or jersey. In fact, outside of my commute to the hospitals, errand runs and trips to friends’ places, I don’t really ride my bike. I started cycling to work during my clerkship year in medical school, partly as a way to …
[ca_audio url=” http://in-training.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/03-Wake-Up-Everybody-feat.-Common-Melanie-Fiona.mp3″ width=”500″ height=”27″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player” autoplay=”false”] Two interesting opinion pieces published a few months ago inspired me write this column: one from Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman defending his “white man privilege,” and another from Max Ritvo explaining what exactly that white man’s privilege is. To summarize their points, the former author laments that his academic success is shadowed by society attributing his successes to being genetically a white man. As a result, society believes …
Columnist
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Jennifer Yang attends medical school at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in the Class of 2016. She is from San Diego, CA and did her undergrad at UC Berkeley studying neurobiology and English. To keep her sanity intact during school, she distracts herself with music, food, reddit, and way too many TV shows. She firmly believes that laughter really is the best medicine.
I'm No Superman
Many of us go into med school with big visions for bettering modern medicine, but as we go through this journey, we realize that there is still a long way to go, and we can't do it all alone. This column is not meant to be extremely profound or didactic but simply a reflection on the what it means to stay human in midst of society's expectations and our own expectations.
