5 Things I Learned My 1st Year of Med School

I'm taking a break from discussing my summer project, because I feel the need to reflect on this huge thing that happened yesterday - I finished my first year of med school. I heard somewhere that a first year med student learns 10,000 new facts, which seems about right. Somewhere in between all of the cadaver dissections, lectures, shadowing, and labs, I learned some lessons that can't be found in any medical textbooks.

1. People will get naked in front of you. I mean this both figuratively and literally. I was shadowing a doctor during one of the first weeks of school, and the doctor was about to give a physical exam. The elderly female patient simply started removing all of her clothing, and I had this urge to look away before I realized that I was supposed to look. In addition, during practice patient interviews for my courses, patients revealed things about their personal, psychiatric, or sexual history that they may not even tell their spouses or their best friends. When you are wearing your white coat, patients will automatically trust you and have faith that you know what you are doing. Who am I to have earned this privilege to hear and see the most intimate details of people's lives?

2. Medicine is messy. As a wise doctor once said to me, "Med students choose their specialty based on which body fluid they least hate to put their hands in." When I was shadowing a Cesarean section, the doctor let me hold the suction tube to suck up the excess blood (similar to what you'd see at a dentist's office to suck up excess drool). I was doing a great job as she was masterfully slicing through the layers of skin, fat, and muscle to get to the uterus. Then, the intern turned to me and said, "Get ready to suck." A half second later, the doctor nicked the amniotic sac, and it was suddenly like trying to suck up a waterfall with an eyedropper. After moments of futile trying, the doctor hastily grabbed the suction away from me and did it herself. The intern was right - I did suck.

3. To the patient, this is a big deal. No matter how many appendixes you have removed, or how many times you've had to break the news that the fetus has Down Syndrome, the patient is experiencing one of the most significant events in their lives. I have heard enough patient stories now to know that some doctors forget this fact. When I was facing some health problems of my own this year, I was having a simple procedure done that I knew (from a med student's perspective) was not a big deal. However, as a patient, I was scared out of my mind. I realized to be a good doctor is to be able to see things from the patient's perspective.

4. Ignore the gunners. For those of you not in med school, a gunner is a med student who is an obnoxious overachiever. They probably said they wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon or dermatologist on the first day of med school. They probably started studying for their MCAT as freshmen in college. They look at you with disdain when you tell them you don't like to read the textbook or didn't study last Saturday night. Although difficult, I had to learn to ignore these people to preserve my sanity. I had to get over the fact that it is truly impossible to learn all of the material presented. There are 3 more years of med school for a reason - we're not expected to have everything memorized the first time around. It was much more worth my time to maintain good relationships with friends and family and to relax on the weekends than it was to study. Balance is essential.

5. I am in the right place. This past year has been the most fulfilling and rewarding year of my life. I have had so many moments where I have just known that this is where I am supposed to be. For the first time in my life, I don't feel like the goal of what I'm doing is to get to someplace else. I'm already here.

Welcome!

I am so incredibly excited to begin writing my first-ever blog. Full disclosure: I have zero writing experience. In fact, I am totally a left-brained kind of person. Right now, I'm just finishing up my first year of medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons. So why, might you ask, am I blogging?

This summer is the so-called "last summer" for us med students, since from the fall on I will have school and work straight through for the next, oh, 60 years of my life. Being at an academia-focused medical center like CUMC (Columbia University Medical Center), the majority of students decided to spend their precious last summer months doing research. To be candid, our med school completely pushed us in this direction. I, however, couldn't stand the thought of being cooped up in a lab all summer, when I don't even know what area of medicine I'm interested in yet. I decided to apply for a fellowship through the Arnold P. Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine. For reasons I'll save for a future post, I have an intense passion for education and social justice, and I designed a project where I will be teaching health literacy at Project Samaritan in the Bronx. Project Samaritan is a residential treatment center in the Bronx, where people living with AIDS and substance addictions live and rehabilitate. They offer a holistic treatment program, including health care, substance abuse treatment, and educational classes. I had shadowed there for one of my med school classes this past year, and I knew I wanted to somehow get involved there during the summer.

By some miracle, I was awarded a Gold Fellowship, and I landed my dream summer job! Part of the requirement for my fellowship is that I write a blog about my experience. I was looking for an excuse to start a blog, so I was thrilled to hear about this. I can't wait to share my journey through this summer, and beyond, with you. I have a meeting with the folks at Project Samaritan tomorrow to plan how my health literacy class will be structured. I'll keep you updated!