Halfway There

June 22, 2010

The last lecture of my second year of medical school was over a month ago, and I’ve been on my third year rotations for almost three weeks now. But I couldn’t really relax and take a break from studying until this week when I took Step 1 of my COMLEX medical licensing boards. I was originally scheduled to take the exam on May 28, two days before my wedding. As it turns out, people who are in the final stages of planning a wedding don’t really have too much spare time to study. So I postponed the exam until June 21.

In the meantime, on May 30, I married the love of my life, my high school sweetheart, and my best friend. Nine years ago, when I was a senior in high school, our two families booked a Spring Break cruise vacation to the Western Caribbean. I met Emily on the Enchantment of the Seas, asked her to my senior prom the following week, and we’ve been together ever since. The wedding was amazing. We all had a good laugh at the reception when the head waiter came to my table to confirm that I was a vegetarian. Literally three minutes later, he brought me a steak dinner. Little mishaps aside, I think everything went very well.

The next morning, on 4 hours of sleep, Emily and I boarded a flight to our honeymoon. Nine years after meeting there, we took a cruise back to the Western Caribbean and visited the same ports. We were in Grand Cayman for my 27th birthday and spent the day lounging on Seven Mile Beach. The next day, in Cozumel, we took a catamaran cruise to swim and snorkel. It was the same excursion we did on the first cruise and every bit as fun.

I started my third year rotations the day after we got back from the honeymoon. During the day, I alternate between rounding on inpatient service and following a hematologist/oncologist at his office. At night, I studied as much as I could for the exam. Now that the test is over, I can finally focus on my rotations during the day (more on that later) and relaxing, catching up on video games, and working on the new house at night. It still keeps me busy, but it’s nothing compared to two years of sitting in lecture for 9 hours a day. Only two years of medical school left. Halfway there.

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Posted by brianfishman

Motivation

April 25, 2010

Every so often, when the endless hours of studying and lack of sleep start to catch up with me, it becomes difficult to find motivation to keep studying. Getting bogged down in the detailed symptoms of this disease or the inexplicable physiology of that syndrome makes it easy to lose sight of the big picture – of why I applied to medical school in the first place. It’s during these times that I take a 2 hour break from studying for the night and pop in my favorite movie.

During my junior of college, I had the privilege of meeting Patch Adams. He came to speak at my school, and, to be completely honest, I can’t even remember what the subject of his talk that day was. What I do remember is that he came out on stage wearing his trademark clown suit (pictured left) and made the entire audience laugh for a few hours. When I met him afterward to sign his book, I asked him what his recommendations were for a student who was thinking about going into medicine. It was fairly loud in the room and I couldn’t quite make out what he said, but above his signature he wrote ‘Follow Your Dreams.’ Cheesy, yes. But meaningful when coming from the right person.

There’s a scene toward the end of the movie where Patch is pleading for his right to graduate from medical school. The dialogue is, again, cheesy. But it’s an amazing philosophy and a great reminder of why I applied to medical school in the first place.

Patch: At what point in history did a doctor become more than a trusted and learned friend who visited and treated the ill? Now, you ask me if I have been practicing medicine. Well, if this means opening your door to those in need, those in pain, caring for them, listening to them, applying a cold cloth until a fever breaks; if this is practicing medicine, if this is treating a patient, then I am guilty as charged, sir.

Dean: Did you consider the ramifications of your actions? What if one of your patients had died?

Patch: What’s wrong with death, sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can’t we treat death with a certain amount of humanity, and dignity, and decency, and god forbid maybe even humor. Death is not the enemy, gentlemen. If we’re going to fight a disease, let’s fight one of the most terrible diseases of all – indifference. Now, I’ve sat in your schools and heard people lecture on transference and professional distance. Transference is inevitable, sir. Every human being has an impact on another. Why don’t we want that in a patient-doctor relationship? That’s why I’ve listened to your teachings and I believe they’re wrong. A doctor’s mission should be not just to prevent death, but also to improve the quality of life. That’s why you treat a disease – you win, you lose. You treat a person -  I guarantee you’ll win no matter what the outcome.

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Posted by brianfishman

Camaraderie

January 7, 2010

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I didn’t particularly care for my undergraduate experience. While I think I received a good education and met some great people, the extremely competitive environment bred a cutthroat attitude among the students. Because most courses were graded on a curve, other students had to perform poorly in order for you to do well. A certain amount of healthy competition is fine, but the survival-of-the-fittest atmosphere at my university went above and beyond.

When I started medical school, I thought this kind of pettiness was behind me. And for the most part, it is. Everyone is working toward the same goal, and while your class rank is certainly important when applying for residencies, letter grades and GPA aren’t nearly as worrisome. Regardless of how well everyone does, the valedictorian and the person with the lowest class rank will both still become doctors.

One of the grading policies that helped relax the students and give us a small cushion when we didn’t do as well on an exam as we’d like was the decision to drop test questions that performed poorly. At least two or three times on every test, a question would unintentionally be worded badly, contain a typo, or simply have more than one correct answer. These questions were either double-keyed or dropped, giving credit to students who got them right. As long as you were a decent guesser, you could usually count on an extra point or two on every exam.

However, today we were informed that, due to student complaints, professors would no longer be dropping questions with credit but rather removing the question from the exam entirely. So instead of an extra point or two, a poorly worded question makes it easier to do badly by lowering the total number of questions on the exam. Granted, we’re dealing with very small point values and the change isn’t likely to affect most grades or overall GPAs. But I cannot fathom why a fellow student would complain about a policy like this. The only possible benefit it could serve would be to raise his or her class rank a few points at the expense of the rest of the class.

If I had a choice between a doctor who performed well academically vs. one who barely made it through school, I’d obviously choose the one who got all A’s. But if those A’s come at the expense of common decency, I’d start looking for a third option.

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Getting Discouraged

October 21, 2009

At various points in your medical education, you reach a point where you have to ask yourself whether or not all your effort has been or will be worth it. Most of the time, you tell yourself that everything you’ve done up until this point has been a step in the right direction that will ultimately get you to your career in medicine.  Sometimes, it becomes difficult to keep your head above water and reassure yourself of what you know to be true.

You’re away from family and friends, and you spend any time you have outside of the classroom inside of a library. There will be some exams where, regardless of how hard you study or how much you think you know, you’ll do poorly. It’s discouraging, because you begin to feel like nothing you do to prepare has any effect on the outcome. You begin to resent the professors for writing ridiculous questions, your classmates for somehow outperforming you, or your friends outside of medical school who are busy starting their own families instead of wasting four more years and another $150,000-$200,000 after college.

I have plenty of things to look forward to at the end of my second year. I’m getting married in May, and I start clinical rotations in June. I’ll actually be getting hands-on experience with real patients instead of pretending to treat actors with fake medical problems. I’ll be leaving Pennsylvania and moving in with my wife to a brand new house.

But when you’re stuck inside every weekend preparing for a 2-3 hour exam every Monday morning, it’s difficult to think that far ahead. You start getting run down, tired of treading water and going through the motions. I know that it will be worth it in a few years when I’m starting a family and doing what I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. It’s just that right now, all I can remember is that I should be studying instead of typing this.

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Posted by brianfishman

100 Blogs to Read Before Med School

September 10, 2009

NursingSchools.net has put together a list of the 100 blog posts you should read before going to medical school. The posts are divided into 8 categories, including: Getting In, Getting Started, Financing School, Advice from Med Students, Getting through School, Residency, Your Education, Testing, Life After Med School. The list covers a huge variety of topics like how to write an admission essay, money saving tips, how to maintain a social life, and (my personal favorite) a guide to not being a pre-med douchebag.

I’m honored to be included on the list at number 48 for a post I wrote over the summer reflecting on my first year of school. I’m happy enough that anyone just reads this site, let alone sees fit to include it on a list like this one. I wish I had a resource like this when I first applied to medical schools. Information from college advisors is useful, but it really helps to hear things from the students’ perspectives.

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Posted by brianfishman

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