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.

Answering The Most Common Question in Medical Education

by

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.
Doctors-in-training have heard this question thousands of times, beginning the moment they announced their intentions to pursue a career as a physician: The question, of course, is some variant of “What kind of doctor do you want to be?” Before I interviewed for medical school, I was told to answer noncommittally; it was suggested that, if I already knew what kind of doctor I planned to become, it would imply the clinical years weren’t important to me. I was told to leave it open-ended so as not to rule any specialty out too early. I see the value in that—looking back, how could I have possibly had a good idea, given my limited clinical exposure before medical school? Even for students that do have clinical experience, it’s easy to imagine they could change their minds and, regardless, should be open to learning from the clinical years. Similarly, we were told not to answer too definitively during third year either—the idea being that if we tell an attending what we want to do, and it isn’t the specialty we are currently working with, we will be permanently alienating ourselves from that profession.

Read more

How Test Prep Prepares Me To Be An Effective Physician

by
minorities and the mcat

Before medical school, the dream of becoming a physician involves helping people and curing disease. During medical school, that dream matures through educational and clinical experiences into a realization that being a physician is something much deeper, a permanent responsibility that only those who are doctors themselves will understand.
Every patient is a trial and error that can lead to life or death. Is the abdominal pain just constipation, a brewing appendicitis, or even worse, colon cancer? Is the patient presentation worthy of simple reassurance, or perhaps blood work, or—to be safe—diagnostic imaging?

Read more

What Students Should Know About Post-Baccalaureate Pre-Medical Programs—Part Two: SMP Students

by

In Part One of this series, we discussed post-baccalaureate pre-medical programs for career-changers (i.e. those who have not yet taken any of their medical school prerequisites). In this article, we will address a different kind of post-baccalaureate program—the Special Master’s Program, or SMP—that is designed for pre-medical students who need to show academic preparedness via additional coursework before applying to medical school. 
Let’s face it—one of the most important components of your medical school application is your numerical data. Is your MCAT score competitive? Is your BCPM GPA strong? For many medical school hopefuls, falling short on one or more of these aspects is a frightening reality. And while studying for and retaking the MCAT is a relatively simple way to address weaknesses in your test results, remedying a low GPA can be trickier.

Read more

Managing Bipolar Disorder in Medical School

by

Two days before interviewing at the medical school I now attend, I couldn’t get out of bed. At the nadir of my eighth major depressive episode in eight years, I seriously considered whether I could make the trip. Thankfully, I did. And thankfully, six days after that interview I met the psychiatrist who would finally piece together my long and steadily worsening psychiatric history.

I sat in his office, quiet and dulled compared to my spring and summer self, and began recounting my story – the weightiness of my current depression, the semester in college marked by a mere two to four hours of sleep a night (“insomnia” according to my doctor then), and the clockwork nature of my mood changes each year. Within ten minutes, he stopped me mid-sentence and said, almost casually, “You know, you show a lot of signs of bipolar disorder.”

Read more

How My Research Degree Taught Me I’m Not a Surgeon

by

Recognizing the connection between lab work and surgery
What surprised me the most during my medical school journey was that it was primarily lab work, not my surgery rotation, that taught me I was not a surgeon. The type of experience my lab work entailed had absolutely nothing to do with surgery or clinical medicine, so it was a peculiar and fortuitous realization. I do not believe when entering medical school that I had ever thought about doing research, but our program strongly advocated it. I met with various advisors in first year and decided I was going to transition into the combined PhD program.

Read more

How Nontraditional Students Can Best Position Themselves When Applying to Med School

by

A friend of mine studied film in college and subsequently found himself working as a cameraman for a documentary television program about the lives of EMTs and ER physicians. He experienced some very tense situations, and from his work decided that he wanted to do more than document how people received medical care—his desire was to participate in the action of helping others as a doctor.
Unfortunately, his film education was the furthest possible undergrad experience he could have from pre-med. He had no applicable science credits, no anatomy or physiology, and the only shadowing he had done of physicians had been with a camera in hand. In short, his path would be an arduous one, and he was soon going to turn 31.

Read more

A Portrait of Obstetrics & Gynecology

by

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.
Having finished my first rotation, Women’s Health Clerkship, I’d like to offer a short look into the specialty, sharing some of my observations the last few weeks. As I have said often over the past two months, I believe this was the perfect rotation to kick off third year. OB/GYNs have a wide scope of practice, and their field contains elements of many other specialties. During this rotation I was exposed to clinical medicine, by which I mean the art of seeing patients in a clinical setting, spending a few minutes with each, and using history and physical exam skills to offer a diagnosis and treatment plan. I was also exposed to surgery. I hadn’t realized just how surgical of a specialty it is, or at least can be, depending on how a doctor chooses to practice. (More on that later.) I also saw some inpatient medicine, managing patients in a hospital setting and consulting with other specialties as needed. And of course, OB/GYNs have a very unique aspect of medicine that is theirs alone: the labor & delivery floor. This breadth of practice settings was an excellent introduction to many aspects of medicine that I’m only beginning to understand.

Read more

Paving the Road to Medical School

by

The path to becoming a doctor can feel daunting. For those of us that don’t come from a medical family, it can be challenging to navigate what all you need to do to be a competitive candidate. As a third year psychiatry resident looking back on my pre-med days, I realize just how lost-in-the-woods I felt at times trying to figure out how to get where I wanted to go. Here are half a dozen steps you can take to help pave the way to medical school. 

Read more

Chronicles of a Med Student: Gearing Up For Round Two!

by
Chronicles of a Med Student

Welcome back! I’m so excited to start my second year (and write about it, of course), but first things first: my amazing summer experience! I went to South America for a few weeks to work at a women’s health clinic. It was an incredible experience. I don’t say that only because I’ve lived to tell the tale, but also because I got to experience a totally new culture and visit one of the seven wonders of the world. The fact that I got to work in a healthcare setting there expanded my communication skills as well as my patience. It can be challenging to work in conditions that are very different from those we see in clinics in the US: sometimes things as basic as lighting aren’t there and you just have to deal with it. This “roll with it” attitude is something I’ve struggled with in the past. Because we’re taught to do things in a very specific manner here in the States, it can be very hard to have to adjust on the spot. Dealing with folding tables for hospital beds and performing physical exams in dimly lit rooms has definitely taught me to work with what’s in front of me. I hope that lesson will last the rest of my career.

Read more

Medical School Interview Do’s and Don’ts

by

One of the most important phases of the application process is your interview. It’s your chance to demonstrate your communication and interpersonal skills, judgment, maturity, and the qualities that are important for a future physician. It’s also your opportunity to see if the school’s learning environment and culture is a good fit for you. It may seem early to start thinking about interviewing, but some medical schools start as early as July, while others interview throughout the fall and spring until their class is filled.
To help make your interview day a success, here are a few do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you prepare.

Read more

What Students Should Know About Post-Bac Programs for Career Changers

by

This two-part series will discuss two types of post-baccalaureate pre-medical programs. This piece will address programs for career-changers, while next month’s post will cover programs designed to enhance one’s GPA and range of science coursework. 
With the number of nontraditional medical school applicants on the rise, many future doctors graduate from college without most or all of the medical school prerequisites under their belt. They embark on a career outside of medicine, and they eventually decide that becoming a physician is the right decision for them. If you are one such prospective medical school applicant, you may be considering a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program, or “post-bac,” in order to complete your prerequisites and to streamline the admissions process. Understanding the details of such programs can be challenging, so why not begin here with these commonly asked questions—and answers—about post-bac programs for career-changers?

Read more

How To Start A “Medwives” Support Group

by
Medical Spouse

By Amy Rakowczyk, SDN Staff Writer

When my husband and I arrived in our new city of Columbus, Ohio for him to begin his medical training, we didn’t know what to expect, but we knew we wanted one thing for sure: to find other people in our same situation and develop some friendships.
My husband is prior military, so we had grown accustomed to joining “Family Support Groups” at each new military station. It was like a ready-made family, already created for you, all you had to do was show up.

Read more

Poker Face: Interpersonal Comparisons in Medical School

by
interpersonal comparison

Poker, one may reasonably argue, is a game of sheer luck; he (or she) who happens upon the most desirable combination of cards will likely win the round of bets. However, as seasoned players know, the art of poker lies in its psychology. The ability of the player to keep an emotionless persona not just when dealt an appealing hand but especially when dealt a bad one—the poker face—is how competitors can trick each other to win in high stakes situations regardless of their cards.
I find at times medical school to be like a big poker game, with its players the medical students. The stakes are plentiful: a “bet” of a couple hundred thousand dollars that a medical degree will be obtained, a desired specialty (though I am in awe how some of us have already chosen or eliminated fields within months of donning the white coat), a coveted residency program, a preferred lifestyle, and more. With our futures on the line, it is thus natural that we all play our cards to the best of our abilities.

Read more

Beginning Clinical Rotations–An Exercise in Humility

by

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.
As I write this article, I am thinking about how to compress all that I’ve seen and experienced the last several weeks into a few paragraphs. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it justice, and if I wrote out all my thoughts it would probably exceed the page limits and the reader’s concentration. So I’m going to focus on a few aspects of this first month of being a third year medical student, and I suspect several themes will reappear and be expanded in future posts.

Read more

Column Intro: The Third Year Differential

by

Central to the skillset of every physician is the differential diagnosis. This is a list of possible diagnoses that helps guide clinical decision-making. By asking specific questions, performing a focused physical exam, and ordering lab tests, all through the lens of the differential, physicians are able to rule in or rule out each item on the list. The differential is not fixed, however; it is a fluid list that can be rearranged or completely changed at any time given new information. This information often comes in the form of an extra piece of history from the patient, a new finding from an imaging study, or frequently, from several lab tests coming back negative.

Read more

QBanks Before Step 1: Bomb the Questions, Ace the Test

by

Here’s a scenario I am asked about a lot: It’s a month before Step 1 and a student is doing lousy on UWorld questions. Or sometimes a student tells me they just took a NBME practice test and dropped from their previous score. Step 1 is getting closer and panic sets in. What should the student do? Bump their test date out a few weeks? Find a new resource? Maybe just quit medicine all together?

This scenario happens to everyone to some degree as Step 1 nears. And although the panic reaction is understandable, poor performance on practice questions before Step 1 is actually a very good thing in many cases. There are three important reasons not to worry too much about wrong answers to practice questions, which I will explain in this post.

Read more

Top 3 Myths about MCAT Scores Busted

by

As with any high stakes exam, it’s not surprising that there are a number of rumors circulating around the MCAT exam. So we are busting three of the top myths about the MCAT scores and score scale.
Myth #1: The MCAT exam is graded on a curve. 
There is no curve associated with the MCAT exam. Instead, the MCAT exam is scaled and equated so that scores have the same meaning, no matter when you test. What does that mean, you ask? There are many different test forms that are produced for a testing year, any of which you could see on your exam day. The forms of the exam are designed to measure the same basic concepts and skills, but each form contains different sets of questions. While care is taken to make sure that each form is about equivalent in difficulty, one form may be slightly more or less difficult than another. We adjust for these differences in the difficulty of test questions when we convert the number of questions you answer correctly to the MCAT score scale. This ensures that scores have the same meaning across test administrations and testing years.

Read more