Best Care Possible
Through his brief poem, medical student Allen Bell opines about the predictable responses of the health care establishment to physician burnout.
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Resident Contributing Writer
F. Edward Hébert School of Medicine - Uniformed Services University
Allen is a recent graduate from the Uniformed Services University and an Intern at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. He was born in Germany and moved to Missouri when he was 12. In 2015, he graduated from the University of Missouri - Columbia with a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry. Before starting medical school in 2017, he worked as an Assistant Manager of a plasma donation center, a live-in Volunteer Firefighter/AEMT, and he co-founded a company with his best friend from college. He enjoys restoring a 1977 F-150, hiking, and spending time with his puppy and his wife, who also happens to be an Intern at Walter Reed.
The Art of Negotiation
Fourth-year medical student Bianca Nguyen likens one of her doctor-patient relationships to a blueprint on how to refine the skill of negotiation as a health care provider. Read more to find out the pearls she gleaned from these encounters.
Surviving a War: Lessons from Pediatric Refugees
Medical student Lewis Wong describes what he gleaned from a seemingly run-of-the-mill clinical encounter with a 14-year-old refugee in his pediatric rotation, and how this sparked introspection into the lessons learned along his medical school journey as well as the core values he hopes to imbue as a community physician.
Rudolph as My Patient
“Medicine is about so much more. Medicine includes teaching, caring and sharing empathy with others.” Read more to hear about how Negin Khosravi’s experience with one of her pediatric patients and her stuffed animal reignited her passion for medicine.
Running to the Garden
“After the surgery, I could, at last, bolt out the door to play with Andrew and those other boys. I could run wild. I could finally be a normal kid.” Medical student Varun Jain takes the reader into his past and dives into the associated challenges and emotions associated with living with and overcoming a heart condition.
Surviving Coronavirus: When Medical Knowledge Becomes a Curse
After learning that her father was diagnosed with COVID-19, medical student Catherina Lubin ruminates on her deepest thoughts, emotions and perspectives as a medical professional and, despite this gut-wrenching reality, how she ultimately found reaffirmation of the quintessential quality, which makes us uniquely human: hope.
Basic Life Support
This sequence of events took place during my second clerkship, OB/GYN, and I knew there was no way I couldn’t write about it. I wrote this for my own catharsis but it also reaffirmed the importance of compassion, competency and awareness in medicine.
When I First Wore My White Coat
As a young immigrant from the Philippines, medical student Russyan recounts his journey, through verse, from his village to medical school and the challenges, lessons and values learned along the way.
My Hero
Showing love in times of loss, being a beacon of hope, taking time to spend with family and regaining our humanity are just some of the values medical student writer Karl Heward emphasizes should be reflected in our practice of medicine while demonstrating how personal tragedy courageously inspired him to adopt this mindset.
First Times in Medicine
Medical school is a series of firsts.
The I Do’s … and Don’ts of Medicine
Our task in donning roles of professionalism as health care providers comes hand-in-hand with all the aspects of our identity and the tolls that come with it. This is especially significant as the younger generation, consisting of more and more intersectional identities, becomes more commonplace not only in society at large but also in the health care world. However, when this ideal of professionalism is compounded by someone like me — a minority woman colored by a recurrent, pervasive backdrop of objectification for pleasure by Caucasian cultures; a female person of color who feels the need to tread carefully to succeed in a field historically dominated by men — where does it leave us?
When Patients Discriminate
For medical providers to treat all their patients justly — without discrimination and judgement — is a mindset that medical students are frequently taught to embrace throughout their medical training. What is not often discussed nor taught in medical education is the reverse situation: patient discrimination towards their medical providers.
Medical Student Contributing Writer
Albany Medical College
Sara Khan is a third-year medical student at Albany Medical College. She is pursuing a career in Pediatrics. She is especially passionate about caring for under-resourced and under-served populations.