20 Questions with Dr. Cosima Gretton, Health Technologist

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Dr. Cosima Gretton is a medical doctor and product manager at Karius, Inc., a biotech startup specializing in infectious disease genomics. She is also a Technology Entrepreneurship Teaching Fellow at UCL, where she is currently designing and delivering a new health care pathway which would guide entrepreneurs through the UK healthcare system, and a fellow at the Digital Health Forum, which brings together industry, academic and clinical experts in digital health. Furthermore, she is a mentor for Startupbootcamp’s healthcare accelerator.
In 2011, she co-founded the AXNS Collective, a science communication company which is looking to advance public engagement in neurology and psychology with the help of scientists and artists.
Dr. Gretton obtained a degree in Experimental Psychology from Oriel College, Oxford University (2009), followed by her medical degree from King’s College London (2015). While at medical school, she studied at the University College London (UCL) Mobile Academy, which supports individuals with new business ideas. She also studied at the Silicon Valley think tank Singularity University, where her team founded an at-home salivary diagnostic start-up called Mitera.
She most recently worked as Product Manager at Outcomes Based Healthcare, designing and building a research app to gather smartphone sensor data for diabetic patients; as a technical lead for RADAR-CNS at the NIHR Biomedical Research Center, a project seeking to find predictors of relapses in a number of neurological conditions; and as a digital health innovation consultant.
Dr. Gretton has written a number of featured articles for The King’s Fund, WIRED Magazine, and KQED Science, and has been published in the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.

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Dear Me, MD | Love Me, M3

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July 21, 2015
Dear Me, MD:
Now that you have opened this letter, you may have graduated or maybe you just matched into residency— somewhere, anywhere, hopefully?! As you read this, it should be some time during spring 2017. But, you never know, sometimes the train derails and it takes a little longer than expected, so forgive yourself if that is the case. You learned a while back that the fast lane is overrated so never mind months or years. You now have the degree that you worked so tirelessly for; the one they told you that you would never get; the degree that bears the title I know you will probably never feel is real.

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Five Student Loan Mistakes You Need to Avoid

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student loan mistakes

While student loans are a necessary financial tool for most of today’s future doctors, the process of repaying them can get complex due to the many types of loans and the accrual of interest. If you make the wrong move, you could wind up facing a costly error—one that may take years to recover from. The following five student loan mistakes are a few of the worst errors that you can make. Do what you can to avoid them.

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Financial Literacy for the Newly Minted Physician: Part One

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“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it…he who doesn’t, pays it.
-Albert Einstein
Your Life Of Abundance
The first thing to note about your life the day after you finish residency is that, despite the fashionable whining of your peers, yours has been an existence of relative abundance: You have likely never driven a nicer car, earned a higher salary, or had greater autonomy.
In 2014, the average resident salary one year out of medical school was $51,000 (Medscape). For perspective, in 2014 the median U.S. household income was $53,657 (U.S. Census Bureau). Given that the median household size was 2.54, a new, single intern fared better than most families that year (Statista).

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Rabbit, Rabbit

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Reposted with permission from here.
The Americans gave each family two rabbits, which we were to care for over the summer and eventually cook. Well, as you might imagine, Tante Ingrid and I got quite attached to the little critters. When the time came for rabbit stew, we were despondent. We begged Mutti to please save them. And somehow — despite having had no meat for God knows how long — she agreed. She must have been so exasperated with us, but she agreed.  

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The Year of Privilege: A New Perspective on Third Year

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During my pediatrics clerkship, one of our core faculty gave a lecture during orientation. This orientation lecture was particularly good, as the professor giving it was one of our most-loved faculty members who is deeply in tune with medical students at all stages. This was back in the summer when we were just getting started with our clinical experiences, but what he said stuck with me all year. He noted with a bit of humor that third-year medical students are the lowest of the low—barely even acknowledged by many team members, ignored by some patients who refuse to talk to anyone but a “real doctor,” disregarded by residents unless it is to point out something you are doing wrong. We chuckled, already able to relate with this view, but he turned the conventional description on its head by encouraging us to think of the third year of medical school as “the year of privilege.”

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Conquer the Obstacle Course of Medical School By Building Multiple Strengths

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Everyone has this perfect image of how fun medical school is when they enter. You daydream about working with patients and saving lives from your first year, but the reality is, medical school is a giant obstacle race. Many people say that it is a marathon, but I do not think that this is accurate. A marathon requires you to be a good runner. Marathon training is gruesome and tiring, but the focus is on increasing your mileage until you feel confident that you can achieve the 26.2 miles on race day. Obstacle race training, on the other hand, is a little more dynamic. You must train yourself to be able to handle the long mileage of running the course, but you also have to develop your body and mind to conquer obstacles requiring strength, agility, strategy, and overall grit. In my drawn-out analogy here, obstacle race training is the “preparing to apply for medical school” stage and the actual application and interview seasonCon is the beginning of your long obstacle race that ends with a medical degree. I will come back to these two points, but first I would like to elaborate on why medical school is an obstacle race.

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Chronicles of a Med Student: Flexibility in Practice

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Chronicles of a Med Student

For a typical medical student shadowing in a clinic for a day, it looks a little something like this: we enter the familiar setting of an outpatient clinic and help as the attending physician sees patient after patient in quick fifteen minute intervals. We also get to see things that patients are not privy to—the virtual stacks of paperwork that wait at the end of each visit, the phone calls for consults, the appropriate orders for the workup of a certain condition in a certain patient. It all seems like a blur. Then we think about the clinical world before we even get to practice as a physician: the years of clinical rotations and especially residency are much more daunting, with their own strict rules, long work hours, and meager pay. Do I have to end up in an office or hospital setting? This is a thought that crept into my mind after hours of clinic observation. What I saw as a pre-medical student is somewhat different than what I experience as a medical student which makes this question far more relevant.

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4 Reasons First-Year Medical Students Should Reflect on Their Initial Clinical Experiences

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Many medical schools are now enhancing their preclinical curriculum (which is typically taught in the first two years of the program) with mandatory and optional clinical opportunities. Though intensive clinical exposure is typically reserved for third- and fourth-year rotations and sub-internships, students whose early curriculum provides clinical experiences should reflect on the impact of these opportunities.
If you are in a medical school with early clinical exposure, consider evaluating these experiences for the following reasons:

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What to Expect as a Med School Spouse: Years 1 and 2

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Medical Spouse

By Amy Rakowczyk, SDN Staff Writer

Congratulations! You are now officially a Medical Spouse. This is a highly rewarding, and also a highly challenging role. You’ve undoubtedly heard that “medical school is hard” and that there is a lot of studying and exams ahead. Your spouse is about to embark upon a completely new path, and you as the spouse, are along for the ride. This article is here to help you understand what’s in store so you can prepare yourself for the next two years!

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The 8 Most Common Mistakes Students Make On Their Medical School Applications

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Let’s be honest: it’s really hard to get into medical school. Each medical school receives thousands of applications every year and most schools have less than a hundred spots available. Which means that if you’ve just received the blow of a med school rejection, you are far from alone.
That doesn’t make it any easier or feel any nicer, we know! Especially when med school is a goal you’ve worked hard for, and when it’s just the next step in your long-term goal of becoming a physician. We understand that being rejected can shake your confidence and leave you wondering what went wrong.
That’s where we can help. At Accepted, we’ve worked with thousands of med school applicants, so we know what committees are looking for – and which applicant mistakes can lead to that dreaded rejection. The first step towards crafting a successful reapplication strategy is understanding what went wrong this time: Did you make a mistake in your application strategy? In the content or execution of your application? Were you overly optimistic about your competitiveness?

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Is a Combined Bachelor’s/MD Program Right For You?

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combined bachelor's/md program

By Jessica Friedman

For students who are fully committed to a career in medicine, combined programs – those that grant you acceptance to both undergraduate college and medical school – can be a great option. They allow you to earn a bachelor of arts or science and a medical degree and are called BS/BA-MD programs. Some programs are as long as 8 years (4 years of college and 4 years of medical school), some are 7 years (3 years of college and 4 years of medical school) and a few are 6 years (2 years of college and 4 years of medical school). The more abbreviated programs are especially rigorous since you complete your college degree in a shorter time. Students in these programs often are in school year round.

Before deciding to apply to combined programs, you should understand the plusses and minuses of doing so.

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The Changing Landscape of the Multiple Mini Interview

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The Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) was first adopted by McMaster University in Ontario, Canada at the Michael G. DeGroote, School of Medicine back in the early 2000s. Initially, MMIs were used strictly during the admissions process for medical school.
For starters, depending on the specific program where you interview, your MMI circuit will likely consist of 6 to 12 stations and may include rest stations. There will be as many participants in your interview circuit as there are stations. The instructions for each station are typically posted directly outside of each room and you are given up to two minutes to carefully read the prompt prior to entering the room. At the end of the two minutes, a bell will sound and this is your cue to enter the room. Typically, a bell ringer type method is used to keep track of the time and you will be allocated six to eight minutes for each station before moving on to the next station.

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