The Catastrophic Search for the Operating Room
Wake up a 5:00 a.m., / Cannot afford to be late. / It’s my first day of preclinical shadowing, / I want my first impression to be great.
Tag: MS3
Former Managing Editor and Contributing Writer
University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine
Currently, Brian is a fourth-year medical student at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. He was born in Westchester County, NY, and moved to Laguna Beach, CA in 2007. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacology and a Bachelor of Science in Biopsychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2017. Brian is planning on becoming an OB/GYN and is currently interested in Surgical Oncology. Outside of the classroom, Brian enjoys playing racquetball, reading on personal finance and nutrition, and enjoying outdoor activities at the beach and hiking.
Building a Sense of Ownership in My Medical Education Through Elective Curricular Development
When I began thinking of establishing an elective, I wished there had been a roadmap to follow to understand where to start and how to invest my time. Hopefully, by detailing my own process, which I’ve broken down into three phases, other students may feel that they too can take ownership of their education by developing something rooted in their passions for others to enjoy and learn from.
Drinking Grapefruit Juice
I didn’t know / many can’t / sip coral pulpy bitter / juice from narrow glasses.
The Unnamed Hero
Until recently, vulnerability meant weakness, allowing oneself to fall behind without a chance for recovery. Courage, on the other hand, had the opposite meaning: betting all my chips on prevailing at any cost.
More Than Skin Deep: Underrepresentation of Brown and Black Skin in Medical Education
Medicine is a discipline that claims to be based on empirical and scientific truth about human nature. Instead, its knowledge and practice are often steeped in biases like racism. For example, medicine was used in the nineteenth century to justify slavery due to the “biologically inherent superiority” of White races.
You’re Not a Bold, Knowledgeable Medical Student — You’re Just White
I knew I moved through these spaces easily for many reasons, but being White is a big one that needs to be said out loud. And when you look and feel more comfortable in a space, it is easier to perform “well,” or to sound confident. This is directly related to what academic medicine characterizes as “objective” evaluations of students, and there is data to support this.
A Growing Disillusionment: The Need for Anti-Racist Curricula in Medical Education
Is medical education doing enough to address future physicians’ abilities to understand the perspectives of their patients? As a medical student, my growing disillusionment begins with medical school and the lack of opportunities afforded to us during our education to discuss matters such as racial inequality.
A Call To Action
Yet another Black man murdered. / I am not Black, I am not White, but I am American. / We were established on the idea of a collective “we” — we, the people, despite creed or color.
Aylan
A mourning sun cries as she tucks away / the night to uncover red and blues / lumps of fabric and skin on gritty sand below.
Looking Towards Clinicals After Graduate School
After four years of adapting my schedule based on the results of my experiments, I once again look forward to having a guided regiment based on monthly shelf exams and the ever looming threat of standardized tests.
Up The Cross: The Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre
In collaboration with the Australian-American Fulbright Program, I spent 2019-2020 examining the treatment of substance use disorders in Australia through the lens of animation. As part of this project, I created a pair of educational animations focusing on the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC) in Sydney’s Kings Cross. This series, entitled Up the Cross: The Uniting Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, examines the founding, protocols and benefits of the MSIC, which was established in 2001.
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.
Contributing Writer
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Samantha is a fourth-year medical student at Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in Miami, Florida class of 2022. In 2016, she graduated from Florida International University with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. She enjoys yoga, going to the beach, and reading in her free time. After graduating medical school, Samantha plans to pursue a career in Pediatrics.