Medical

Learn about medicine and how to become a physician in our articles for pre-medical students (including the MCAT), medical students, resident physicians, and practicing physicians.

ShirlyWhirl, MD: The Life of a Med Student in Comic Form

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Shirlene Obuobi draws the life of a medical student in her comic ShirlyWhirl, MD. See more comics on the ShirlyWhirl, MD  Facebook and Instagram.

Tell us about yourself
My name is Shirlene; I’m 24 and go to Pritzker School of Medicine. I was born in Ghana and have lived in Chicago, small town Arkansas, The Woodlands, TX, and went to Washington University in St. Louis for undergrad. I enjoy writing, drawing, and long walks along the lakefront. I recently adopted a cat. His name is Kahlo. 
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I was one of those six-year-old children who said they wanted to be a doctor from the get-go. It’s a pretty boring origin story.

What drew you towards medicine?
My mom is a neonatologist, so I’ve had lifelong exposure. Like everyone else, I like that medicine is one of those careers that is both spiritually fulfilling (you get to directly change people’s lives! How cool is that! How arrogant are we that we’re okay with that level of responsibility!) and intellectually stimulating.
Tell us about ShirlyWhirlMD in a nutshell.
ShirlyWhirlMD is meant to convey typical experiences of healthcare professionals, and especially medical students, in fun comic form.

How did you come up with the idea for ShirlyWhirlMD?
I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember! In high school I made little comics for our school newspaper; in college, I started a comic club (shoutout to KaPOW!) for the same purpose. I started drawing med school-related comics mostly as a way to de-stress and shared them with my class. My roommate suggested that I actually share them with a larger audience! So here we are.
What is your ultimate goal for your comics?
First, I want to help connect different healthcare professionals over common experiences in medicine, and also to spark dialogue about some of the things that go on in medicine that we don’t discuss amongst ourselves frequently. For example, I care a lot about advocacy, and think that as healthcare professionals we carry an unusual amount of clout in society. But we rarely discuss what we see, and what we can do about it. I also think it’s important to not take ourselves too seriously, and to let the rest of the world know not to take us too seriously either. I recently had an attending who is near retirement tell me that he was looking forward to regaining his pre-professional identity again after years of being Dr.___. I want my patients to be able to look me up and say, “this girl is goofy, but she’s honest and I like that.” I’m going to definitely start introducing more serious topics to my comics, and I really would love to see people interact with them!

How can comics like ShirlyWhirlMD help students and health professionals? 
 
I think a lot of us suffer from a healthy dose of impostor syndrome—we worked hard to get into college, then into medical school, then residency. At every stage everyone around us becomes more and more impressive. So we tend not to talk to each other about our little insecurities, mistakes and frustrations. I think, on the student end at least, having this little comic reassure them that other people have similar experiences to theirs might make them realize that it’s ok to not have everything figured out.
What do you like to do for fun?
I also love to write. I draw (clearly), though the style I use in ShirlyWhirl, M.D. is actually very different from my usual work. I read a lot. I also like backpacking (the traveling kind) and have been all over Eastern Europe at this point.
Has your work on ShirlyWhirlMD changed the way you approach your future as a physician?
I am, at baseline, a pretty introspective person, but searching for material for my comic has forced me to be even more introspective. I have to be aware of my own biases and mental state when I’m taking care of patients. As the work gets more tiring and the amount of responsibility I have increases, I have to remember not to cut corners and to put myself in my patient’s shoes. For example, can I really be mad at the patient who is habitually non-compliant with his medications when I can barely remember to take my daily Zyrtec? Probably not.
What was the most challenging part of medical school for you?
What hasn’t been challenging? I think I’ll start with what hasn’t—for me, working with patients, learning the material itself, developing plans, all the aspects of medicine that drew me in—have kept their charm. The hardest parts have more to do with the culture of medicine, which basically expects people in training to be impervious to stress, illness, and to constant work. Third year you get evaluated clinically for the first time, and there’s a lot of internal pressure to already know everything at a time when you’re supposed to be learning. You’ve got to go to the hospital for 10-14 hours, come back and prepare for a shelf exam that you only have four to nine weeks to study for, which is graded on the most unforgiving curve because other medical students are wicked smart and very good at studying. If you don’t have a very secure support group, it can be isolating. If you already struggle with mental illness, it’s especially tough. Residency will just be more intense.

Are you interested in combining a career as a physician with creating comics or graphic novels? Here are some other interviews with physician-authors:

Has anything surprised you about your work on ShirlyWhirlMD? 
Just how universal a lot of my experiences are. Not just to other medical students, but to people who are well into their careers!
Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years?
I just figured out what I’m doing for the next three. Don’t make me think further than that. I’ll be a doctor and still be drawing, I guess?

What do you think the next big thing in medicine/healthcare will be?
I think the healthcare system in America is in need of major revamping. It’s currently incredibly inequitable, unsustainable, and unethical. On the patient’s side, the costs are out of control–an uninsured patient can get charged $50k for an appendectomy, and what is he supposed to do about that? Shop around for the best price until his appendix ruptures and he ends up with acute abdomen? On the physician’s side, there’s no incentive to spend real time with your patients, no incentive to take on
patients that need you the most, like those on Medicaid and Medicare, and very little incentive to go into primary care. I’m really hoping we start moving toward a single-payer form of healthcare.
What’s your favorite premed or med school memory?
I have so many of these! As far as in-hospital shenanigans, probably dancing to “Lose Yourself” in the OR with my 70+ year old attending. For out-of-hospital shenanigans, maybe a road trip to Toronto with my classmates.
What impact do you hope ShirlyWhirlMD has on medicine over the next decade?
I hope it spawns more creatives in medicine to start sharing their work, and to become a stomping ground for physician-generated discussion!
We’re on the lookout for other Med Innovators! Do you know a student or resident doing something cool to advance healthcare? Let us know! Email us at editor@studentdoctor.net.

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Dealing With Premed Stress

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premed stress

With another busy semester behind you, you might be using your summer to work or volunteer, prepare for the MCAT exam, or work on your medical school applications. But summer is also a good opportunity to catch your breath and practice a little self-care. Being a premed is stressful, but there are healthy habits you can start practicing now that will help you manage stress next semester, and later when you’re in medical school.

1. Cook at home. It’s tempting to save time by always buying meals on the go, but cooking for yourself can actually be a stress relieving activity. And it’s often the healthier choice. Plus, it will save you money! Try listening to music, a podcast, or an audiobook while you cook, or turn it into a social activity by cooking with your roommate or significant other.

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4 Things I Wish I’d Known About the MCAT

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taking the mcat

Walking out of the test center after I had completed the MCAT was a surreal experience. Somehow, the far-off test date for which I had been preparing for months had not only arrived, but had already passed. I was suddenly and thankfully in possession of all of the components of a complete medical school application, as an MCAT score was the last blank space to fill on my impending AMCAS application.

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How To Make New Friends and Find A Community

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Medical Spouse

If your spouse’s medical studies have recently brought you to a new city, or to a new community within a familiar city, you will need to search for new friends and support groups. Medical school is not about being “strong” and pushing through all the hard stuff. It’s about having people to lean on when the going gets tough.
Building yourself a new community and finding friends, especially those that you hope to be able to share your delightful, as well as dark moments with, is not an easy task. However, it is a necessary one!

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The Joy of the Perfect Candidate: A Conversation with Susan Mulroney, PhD

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Sometimes, Susan Mulroney, PhD, professor and director of the special master’s program at Georgetown Medical Center, wonders how she got so lucky.
“I wonder- how did people let me get this job? How did I get this career? I was going to be a medical researcher. That was wonderful, and I loved that, but as soon as I started teaching medical students, it was like, oh my God, I love this. This is amazing.”

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Osmosis Co-Founders Ryan Haynes and Shiv Gaglani

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Ryan Haynes, PhD and Shiv Gaglani, MBA discuss how they went from anatomy partners to the founders of Osmosis, an advanced learning platform that helps medical & other health professional students succeed in classes, on board exams, and in the clinic.
Tell us about yourself
Ryan: I’ve had a longstanding interest in how the brain works. Before attending Hopkins for med school I did a PhD in neuroscience at Cambridge studying decision making. I now live in Charlottesville, Virginia where my wife is a resident in neurology at UVA.
Shiv: I am passionate about developing scalable solutions in the fields of healthcare and education. I attended Johns Hopkins School of Medicine between 2011-2013 and then took a leave of absence to co-found Osmosis as well as complete an MBA at Harvard Business School. I’m now based back in Baltimore where my fiance, Malorie, is an OB/GYN resident at Johns Hopkins.

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The Future of MD/DO Residencies Under Single Accreditation

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Recently, the Accrediting Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) announced that by 2020, all allopathic and osteopathic residency programs would come together under one umbrella accreditation system. This is a significant shift away from the historical separation between MD and DO programs. DocThoughts’ Host, Nirmal Gosalia, invited Dr. John Potts, Senior VP of Surgical Accreditation at the ACGME and key leader in the implementation of the Single GME System, to clarify the decision and its future impact on graduate medical education. 

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Internal Medicine: The "Classic" Physician

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By Brent Schnipke

If the average reader is asked to imagine a typical medical student, he or she might picture the following scene: a group of frazzled young people in short white coats, scurrying around the wards of a large academic medical center. They travel in hordes, flocking to the nearest attending, who calmly asks them asinine questions and then chides them for their lack of knowledge. This scene is stereotypical of an often-stereotyped field, and might be something one would see in a caricature of the hospital – on a show such as Grey’s Anatomy or Scrubs. Although this is only one example of what medical education can look like, it is helpful for giving a simplified look at the life of a third-year medical student in the throes of clinical rotations.

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Q&A with Jonny Kim, MD, NASA Astronaut Candidate

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When the 12 members of NASA’s 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class report to Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX for their two years of training, two of them—Dr. Jonny Kim and Dr. Frank Rubio—will leave behind medical careers for the chance to explore the final frontier. SDN recently spoke with Dr. Kim about his nontraditional path to medical school and his transition from emergency medicine resident to astronaut candidate.
Dr. Jonny Kim started his career in the US Navy, where he trained as a Navy SEAL and completed more than 100 combat missions, earning a Silver Star and a Bronze Star with Combat “V”. He earned a degree in mathematics at the University of San Diego and his MD at Harvard Medical School. He is currently finishing the intern year of his residency in emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the end of the two years of astronaut training, Dr. Kim and the other astronaut candidates could be assigned to any of a variety of posts furthering NASA’s mission.

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How Do College and Medical School Classes Differ?

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As a premedical student, you are likely familiar with some of the subjects that are covered in the standard medical school curriculum. After all, how different could biochemistry in medical school be from undergraduate biochemistry?
While your premedical courses will certainly provide you with a strong background with which to approach medical school, it is imperative that you understand that undergraduate classes differ substantially from medical school courses in both difficulty and breadth of content. Think of your undergraduate science education as preparation for medical school—not as an opportunity to cover all of the material in one of your medical school classes prior to matriculation. Here are four key ways in which medical school courses differ from undergraduate classes, as well as some tips on how to deal with these differences:

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Dear Me, M3 | Love Me, MD

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Dear Me, M3:
As graduation approaches and the days of fourth year freedom quickly fade away, the terrifying reality of being a stupefied intern becomes more and more paralyzing. Self-doubt started as a whisper but is slowly escalating to a deafening scream. I have read and re-read the letter you wrote in attempt to silence the negativity— to remember how I felt as a naive third year student trying to navigate the world of clinical medicine— to remind myself of a time when graduation was an unforeseeable future and matching into residency seemed like an absurd possibility. Undoubtedly, your foresight advice will sharpen my self-awareness and hold me accountable to be kind and compassionate, to stay humble. Yet, in order to reassure myself that I will make it, to bury the self-doubt, it is time for some self-to-self hindsight advice— time to remind myself of lessons learned along the way. So here it goes:

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Residency: The Interview and Selection Process

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Medical Spouse

Residency applications! The light at the end of the tunnel, and the process that will chart the course for the next 3+ years of your life and your spouse’s medical career. No big deal, or anything! It is an incredibly exciting time, while also being quite unsettling. Here’s what to expect and how to make it as joyful of a process as possible.

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