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.

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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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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Finding Clinical Opportunities: Show Up, Ask, and Follow Through!

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I was recently asked to give advice on finding clinical opportunities. Here’s the short version: show up, ask, and follow through! This is an exciting and supportive profession you are entering. Physicians not only remember what it feels like to be in your shoes but they are eager to support you. Part of our responsibility in medicine is to educate and mentor the next generation. This applies to everyone from a first-year medical student all the way to the most seasoned attending.  I’ve had opportunities to tutor my classmates, write for Elsevier, deliver a heart from its pericardium, coordinate a helicopter landing and practice my old fashioned medical skills on the 7th continent all because I have shown up, asked for opportunities, and followed through when given the chance. Here are a few notes on how I approach gaining these clinical opportunities.

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Get a Top Score on the MCAT for Less Than $300

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Many MCAT prep companies will try to sell you on the idea that you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a fancy prep course with all its bells and whistles in order to get a top score on the MCAT, but this just isn’t the case. We carefully analyzed the experiences of students that scored above the 95th percentile on the MCAT and looked for patterns in their preparation, and our analysis revealed that the students who performed well weren’t necessarily the students who spent the most money on a prep course. In actuality, top scorers use a variety of low-cost resources. And this actually makes perfect sense. Think about it. Every MCAT prep company has a single (likely slightly inaccurate) perspective regarding the most important concepts to know for the MCAT. By preparing using a variety of materials, you will gain several perspectives on the material, which when combined together provide you with a much more accurate picture of the MCAT.

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Improve Your CARS Reading Speed by Quickly Finding the Main Idea

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The CARS section of the MCAT Exam can be really scary. It’s not that you don’t know how to read. The problem is that you don’t know how to read critically, and that’s a whole different way of analyzing a passage. Trying to decipher a CARS passage with the same skills that you use to read a science text is like trying to play tennis with a golf club. You need different tools, and the first tool you need to help you read faster and have a clear understanding of a passage is a basic knowledge of Rhetoric.

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All in the Family: A Profile of Family Medicine

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Central to the skillset of every physician is the differential diagnosis; this is the process by which new patients are evaluated to establish the most likely diagnosis. Similarly, the first clinical year of medical school is like a differential for each student, except instead of a medical diagnosis, students are seeking to determine which specialty they will choose. This column explores this differential: experiences from each rotation by a current third-year student.
My first day on Family Medicine might be the best depiction of the specialty: my clinical preceptor and I moved between our three clinic rooms, barely able to keep up with the 20+ patients that had appointments. We saw a patient following up on depression with new-onset low back pain; a middle-aged woman with a classic urinary tract infection; a husband and wife geriatric wellness visit; an adult woman with diabetes; a 9-year-old with strep throat; and a few cases of sinus infection to round out the day. By the end, I was exhausted and wondered how I would ever learn everything that my preceptor knew about such a wide variety of disease processes and patients. By the end of the rotation, I was still nowhere near his level or my other professors’ – years of residency and clinical experience still separate us – but had at least developed a sense of how to manage many of the common illnesses, and feel that I have a good understand of the breadth and variety of family medicine.

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Time Away From Formal Academics Can Enhance Application

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take gap year

Whether or not a student should take a “gap year” (or two) often comes up during our conversations with applicants to medical school. Based on MedEdits’ experience working with students, we find that gap years are becoming increasingly common and that this extra time away from formal academics can enhance a student’s candidacy.

The Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) 2016 Matriculating Student Questionnaire (MSQ) reports that the age of matriculants continues to rise, with 60.6% reporting that more than a year had passed since graduating from college, up from 57.9% in the 2014 MSQ. Matriculation data from colleges of osteopathic medicine show that the average age at matriculation in both 2015 and 2016 was 24.

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