May 2011
1 post
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Are the Boards and the Wards Misaligned?
“Tina” came to the pediatrician’s office with her mother. At fifteen, Tina had never menstruated. Naturally, she and her mother were concerned about the developmental delay. On exam, Tina was short for her age. She had a broadly shaped chest, poor breast development, and her nipples were far apart. She had an oddly webbed neck, and noticeably small fingernails...
April 2011
27 posts
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Dear Visitors
To all my readers, and visitors of my blog — I would just like to apologize in advance.
As life continues to get busier, while I continue to progress through my third year of medical school — I will not be able to keep the blog updated daily, but I will try to submit a post once a week.
In the meantime I will start accepting guest posts, if you would like to submit something please...
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Types of Medical Student Bloggers
(via A Cartoon Guide to Becoming a Doctor)
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What happens to the insurance coverage of people...
The recipient’s insurance covers the tab for both the donor and the recipient for the procedure. The donor needs regular follow ups for the rest of his/her life to make sure that one kidney is in tip top shape. The recipient’s insurance drops coverage because they can’t cover this tab forever. They cut the donor off. And then the donor is left with the bill.
Only in America. Our healthcare...
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Neuroscience: Brain Buzz
Around 1800, Italian scientist Jean Aldini zapped the brains of dead felons with electricity to make their bodies move. He later reported using the same technique to cure “melancholy.” This sounds like the history of electroconvulsive (shock) therapy, but those were actually the first experiments in transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), tweaking the brain with very mild...
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Food For Thought
Medicine and diagnosis revolve around collecting information from patients in the form of interviews, physicals, and diagnostics; social and environmental factors, positive and negative findings, and way more lab values than you really need. This plethora of information can be daunting and is often impossible to process all at once. So, we pick and choose and comb through the lengthy histories and...
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How Can I Learn Everything I'm Expected to Know?
For most of you, it was relatively easy to sail through college. Good grades came easily, and mastering the subject material in your classes seemed completely realistic. Although it was years ago, I remember vividly the first month of medical school when the study methods I had used in college did not seem to work any longer. I barely passed my first test in embryology. The amount of material we...
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USMLE Step 1 performance for Caribbean students?
In preparing for the USMLE Step 1 exam, it seemed that the most frustrating aspect was a lack of any sort of feedback about how the preparation was proceeding.
The NBME has recently released data showing the relationship between students’ Comprehensive Basic Science Self-Assessment (CBSSA) Performance Profile Scores and their performance on the USMLE Step 1.
Acad Med. 2010 Oct;85(10...
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How Should I Schedule My Third-Year Clerkships?
Your third year of medical school can be exciting and also daunting. Many students ask what the “best” schedule is for their third-year clerkships. Although there is no right answer, there are a few guidelines that can be helpful.
First, try to determine your chosen field of interest. Take some time during your first and second years to shadow physicians, talk to residents and...
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In pain? Why not try some meditation!
You don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to experience the health benefits of meditation. According to a new study, even a brief crash course in meditative techniques can sharply reduce a person’s sensitivity to pain.
In the study, researchers mildly burned 15 men and women in a lab on two separate occasions, before and after the volunteers attended four 20-minute meditation training...
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Can an antibiotic user fee reduce resistance?
The Infectious Diseases Society of America recently released a list of policy suggestions aimed at combating the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. One of their suggestions: Charge wholesale purchasers of antibiotics a user fee. Most of the money would go toward funding development of new antibiotics—something that Big Pharma doesn’t pay much attention to, because it...
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Paging Dr. Wikipedia
It’s 3 in the morning. You’re a third-year clerk, and you’re 21 hours into your on-call day on a busy internal medicine service. Suddenly, a page from the emergency department; “Mrs. J, a 78-year old woman with a history of heart disease, is coming in with what sounds like a CHF exacerbation, and it looks like it’s going to be a direct-to-medicine admit.” You...
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Depression in Med School: You're Not Alone
Recent studies have highlighted a problem that many medical students know about all too well: the prevalence of depression and burnout in medical training. On student discussion boards, the stories put a human face on this troubling issue.
One medical student writes that she experienced severe depression during exams a few years ago. “I couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t sleep, I...
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Tips for Surviving Medical School
Remember when you were a premedical student in college? It seems like a century ago for many of us who have just completed the first year of medical school. It feels that way because our lives have changed dramatically. Normal life seems to have vanished, and suddenly, 24 hours in a day are not enough to get through the enormous volumes of information that we are expected to learn for every exam....
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Would The FDA Approve Of 'Limitless'?
One pill makes you larger And one pill makes you small And the one that mother gives you Don’t do anything at all Go ask Alice When she’s ten feet tall
— From “The White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane
And I thought that tune was dated. But not after I saw “Limitless,” the film starring Bradley Cooper (Eddie Morra) and the legendary Robert DiNiro...
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“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
– Gandhi
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“Focus on what you love, and nothing else.”
– Leo Bauta
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I Implore Every Public Bathroom to Install These...
I’m not saying I’m as bad as Howard Hughes, but I will confess to always tearing a bit of toilet-roll of paper towel off and using it to open public bathroom doors with on my way out.
At $50 a pop, these Toepeners would surely end up saving shopping malls, offices and other public venues money over the long-run, with less paper wasted and thrown on the floor. Not to mention the debt...
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Is There an Underlying Specialty-Bias in Medical...
A multitude of factors drive students towards, or away from, the path of family medicine. Much has been made recently of reimbursement schemes that incentivize specialty practice. Certainly, medical students strapped with debt are showing preference to more lucrative fields for residency. But is there more to this choice beyond the surface of financial incentive? What about the very environment...
