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Are We Healing People Yet?
So there you are, on the first day of third year about to start your clinical training. Two years of lectures behind you, thousands of facts disintegrating in your brain every day, and you are standing sheepishly in your new short white coat at the nurse’s station about to start your […]

Getting Past the Hype

Only one percent of all visits to physicians take place at academic medical centers. And yet, because as medical students and residents we spend all of our time at these institutions our views of the profession are colored accordingly. As I am a resident at a large academic medical center (Duke) you […]

Don’t Get Carried Away
Exactly how much anatomy do you need to know and how much time should you spend in gross lab? Opinions vary. Some people love lab and eat it up (figuratively speaking) maintaining that there is no way to learn anatomy other than to spend hundreds of hours elbow deep in a cadaver. […]

Relax
Several years before I applied to medical school my daughter became ill and had to be admitted to our local teaching hospital. Twice a day, the head of the Pediatrics department would make his rounds followed by an impressive entourage of about a dozen residents and third year medical students rotating through pediatrics. As they […]

Things that Suck About Medicine
1. People who don’t wash. Come on, folks. Soap is cheap. If I ran the hospital every patient, before being allowed to enter, would have to wash his feet, wash his crotch, and wipe his ass. Oh, and tooth-brushing, that’s important too.
2. Manual disimpaction. Enough said.
3. Overnight call.
4. Dumb, lazy, ignorant, […]

Can You Be a Pro-Life Physician?
You all might as well know that I am very pro-life. Without arguing the merits of the position, I want to dispel a common misconception among medical students and physicians, namely that even if a physician is pro-life he must still refer a patient to an abortion providor even if, […]

More Random Advice for Medical Students
1. Don’t lick your fingers after a digital rectal exam…and for pete’s sake don’t linger. There’s not that much up there that you can’t feel in three minutes.
2. Brain: It only looks tasty.
3. Yell at the nurses. Tell them that when you’re an intern, there will be hell to pay […]

Don’t Freak Out

The requirement to do pelvics, DREs and other invasive exams on classmates is an urban myth. You will not have to stick a speculum or your finger in anybody in your class, period.
To learn how to do a pelvic, for example, on your OB-Gyn rotation you will probably observe your resident do a […]

1. The Medical Profession is not a cult. I get flamed for saying this. You do not have to sacrifice your sanity, health, and physical fitness to its service, especially not in first and second year. It is just a profession. Treat it as a demanding job to which you expect to devote sixty hours […]

Get a Cheap Pair of Sneakers

Get a cheap pair of sneakers and a couple of pairs of cheap scrubs for anatomy lab. The smell gets everywhere. I’d even consider showering and changing in the Student Exercise Room before going home. Also, you and your tank partners should invest in one Dissector (the book which describes […]

How to Get Into Medical School

Every year about 40,000 students apply for about 20,000 spots in the 125-or-so medical schools in the United States. Because I am a “glass half full” kind of guy I call these pretty good odds. But make no mistake, medical school admission is fairly competitive and the trend has not […]

• Don't Put Your Eye Out

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