defineyourgrind:

Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90% chance or a 50% chance or a 1% chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight. - Lance Armstrong

mdrambles:

“The only question that’s dumb is the one you don’t ask, because no one can learn that way.”

— One of my incredible resident colleagues <3

Real Talk

thelostmedstudent-oldaccount:

When I got out of high school, deciding to go into medical school was an easy choice for me. I went to university, studied my ass off for 2 years and then got accepted into medical school.

I thought I was set for life. That I had a guarantee for a career as a doctor. Looking back, I can only see how naive I was…

Medical school has got to be the toughest thing I’ve ever been through. The breakdowns, the physical and mental exhaustion, failing an exam for the first time, etc etc… I have questioned if medicine was my true path so many times that I have lost count. In fact, yesterday I called my sister in yet another breakdown, and she told me : “With the amount of times you called me like this, I’m honestly surprised you’re still doing it.” Reality check, no?

Here I am in my last year, about to go through the interview stages. I am now completely torn for what I want to do as a specialty : go in the surgical field, which I have always adored? Or go into family medicine, where the specialty itself doesn’t excite me as much, but I would have a better quality of life to do the personal things I love? And then there’s always the little voice inside my head that tells me to find another passion that’s outside of medicine…

The thing that drives me crazy with medicine is that there’s still that old school belief that if you want to be a doctor, you have to let everything else go. You can’t take a year off to do some soul searching, because that’s career suicide. I think it’s time to do some re-evaluating of how medical school is taught, the lifestyle of residents and doctors, and start modernizing the medical life. If we don’t, we will simply find ourselves with more unfit doctors that are trying to take care of others instead of themselves, and that I believe is simply unhealthy…

Anonymous asked: What does “read about your patients” mean? I’m feeling overwhelm with clinical and I’m not sure how to improve. There are shelf exams and all day clinic. I think I’m missing the big picture right now. I don’t know what to read about with these 30 patients I see each day.

md-admissions:

Hi there, anon!

Oh yeah, I hated when people told me “read about your patients.” Because what the hell did that even mean? How do I do that? Read about WHAT?

So this is, after 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency, what I have interpreted that to mean. Folks reading this, please add, challenge, or question. I could still very well be wrong after all these years.

Reading about your patients means to read about an interesting or important aspect of your patient’s care or diagnosis. My do’s and don'ts for doing so are as listed below:

1. DO read about a specific aspect: If you had a patient with Cdiff colitis, read about the problems with the PCR and toxin tests. If you have a patient with CHF, read about cardiac rehabilitation and what the heck it is, if your patient is planning to go to cardiac rehab.

2. DON’T try to read a book: Keep that reading succinct and not overly specialized, like to 3 articles at most a night, I would say even just one good article is more than enough. Quality, not quantity. No one is going to get on your ass or fault you if you’re not reading Circulation or Blood (journals for cardiology and hematology, respectively) from cover to cover or reading Harrison’s, the massive IM textbook.

3. DO make what you read relevant to your exams: Reading about your patient when you are already trying to prep for shelf exams and whatnot should serve to enhance your shelf studying and general knowledge of the discipline. For example, you have a patient with alcoholic hepatitis, read about how to diagnose alcoholic hepatitis. This 1) narrows your topic 2) limits the quantity you read but 3) keeps it relevant to your exams.

4. DON’T read about every patient. You simply can’t. Pick one thing. Maybe you noticed everyone coming in today had diabetic foot ulcers, that’s a good thing to read about. Maybe one patient’s cancer diagnosis. Maybe IV drug use and Hep A outbreaks. Doesn’t have to be on every patient. My attending was telling me about a prior fellow who kept a little notebook, and every day he’d write down in the notebook one thing he learned today from each patient, be it trivial, personal, medical, whatever. And he’d pick one thing from that list and read on it. I love that idea, and I’m trying to adopt that.

5. DO try to read a study. If you hear your residents, fellows, or attending name-drop a study, that’s a good thing to read. Don’t feel like you have to read the whole darn thing. Go to like Journal Club and get the highlights, read the abstract and results and discussion, etc.

6. DON’T assume reading about your patients always means reading. Podcasts, youtube videos, other ways to learn about a specific thing are all valid. Just go back to what I said before, make the topic you “read” about specific and relevant to your patient but not overly specialized so that it’s not applicable to shelf exams.

Hope that helps a bit!
md-a

thepersonalquotes:

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this account still alive!😊😉🙃😁😄

twloha:

“The strength of the darkness you’ve overcome in the past is igniting hope for the future. So hold on to that thread of hope like your life depends on it; stay for the light you can’t yet see around the corner. There is so much more to life than what is happening in this exact moment in time, and I firmly believe that a few years from now when you look back, you will see the good that came and think to yourself, ‘I am so glad I stayed.’”

— Sarah Wright, “If I Hadn’t Stayed”

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