The last year of clinics have been full of successes and failures. I’ve helped patients and learned a lot, but I’ve also come up short when it mattered most. One year ago, I wrote a summary of my goals as a clinical medical student, and in retrospect, I feel that I’ve mostly achieved what I outlined. Additionally, here are some lessons I never expected to learn: Read more  

After leaving clinic on Friday, I went to Baylor Med’s interview day to talk to prospective students about life as an MS3 and give them a tour of the Texas Medical Center. During the afternoon, an applicant asked me how I still had the energy to be so enthusiastic about medical school and come back to Baylor Med after a busy clinic. In her words – “aren’t you burned out yet?”

My emphatic response followed without hesitation – “no way!” I’ve written about this several times through the months, but the further I get into medical school, the more appreciative I am for this opportunity to help people in a way that very few can.

When I think about it, I’ve lost touch with a lot of my classmates and friends outside of med school. Fortunately, this void has been quickly filled by anticipation for the patient encounters I’ll have on the wards. What new conditions will I see? What life stories will these people share with me? How can I become a better student-doctor today? Learn a new fact. Nail that diagnosis. Be a better teammate. All things considered, the day-to-day responsibilities can burn people out, but it’s all about finding what inspires you, being grateful for having a medical school spot when countless others could not, and framing your day in the context of your future career.

I’m now sitting on my bed reading over the surgery section of Boards & Wards for my shelf exam in three weeks. I feel utterly unprepared. I know this is going to be a long week. Yet there’s that part of me that knows by tomorrow afternoon when I’m in clinic with the wonderful residents and my amazing teammates, I’ll forget about all these pressures (for better or worse) and make more precious connections with my patients.

Oh my gosh, the hours are so long. My attending yelled at me! I have to work a full 12 hour shift! And God forbid, back-to-back 12 hour shifts… including a weekend day?! Why am I here?

I’m getting pretty tired of how melodramatic some medical students can be about our responsibilities. Try to consider what residents go through! And what the doctors who trained “back in the day” of scant hour limitations went through. Many of us have 100+ hour weeks to look forward to later in our training… how many med students can genuinely say they have already experienced that? Read more  

Early in block 1 of the basic sciences, an upperclassmen mentor pointed out a post I wrote following my first preceptorship session which could have been considered an invasion of patient privacy. I had deliberately altered and removed descriptors which I thought could be labeled as HIPAA violations, but the mentor wanted me to err on the safe side by removing the post entirely. Just a few weeks ago, another entry was brought to my attention by a faculty mentor and friend – apparently, a physician outside of the Texas Medical Center came across a post containing, again, material which could supposedly be used to identify a patient. In both cases, had I not been confronted directly, I would have never known I was stepping on toes. Read more  

This is my last post as a second year medical student (MS2). The first six months were spent completing the basic sciences, but over the last six months, I’ve finished rotations in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry while also doing ENT research in April. I wanted to write a post summarizing the many things I learned over the last year (like at the end of my MS1 year) but ended up discovering that there is only one, overbearing truth I’ve learned as an MS2.

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On the first day of orientation for internal medicine (IM), the faculty noted that they now have statistical evidence which supports the notion that students who start on IM tend to do better on all their subsequent rotations. Why? The reasons are up for debate, but halfway through the rotation, I think it deals with the breadth of cases students encounter on the wards coupled with the extensive preparation we do for the IM shelf exam. Read more  

Nowadays, it’s customary (and sometimes required) to take a foreign language starting as early as middle school. I remember back in the day, my pre-med friends who attended private high schools would take Latin to have an “edge” in understanding the language of medicine. Living in Houston, I did what I felt was logical and took four years of Spanish instead. Come to find out, this may have been one of the best decisions I made in grade school. Read more  

18 months. Hundreds of lectures on everything from embryological development to geriatrics. Countless hours spent learning structures in anatomy and memorizing lists for histology. Now that I’m finally finished with the eighteen month basic science portion of the Baylor Med’s curriculum, it’s time for some reflection. And some sleep. Read more  

Now that I’m officially a second year medical student (MS2), I thought it would be nice to reflect on the things I learned in the first eleven months of this journey. Read more  

A friend of mine in the JAMP program recently got accepted to UT Southwestern and will be matriculating there this fall. We had a great chat in which he admitted his anxiety and sought any advice I had to offer. I’ve been looking for an opportunity to share my singular pearl of wisdom, so here it is. Read more