#thethingsiworryabout

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Five Biggest Mistakes Students Make with First Aid for USMLE Step 1

The question for using First Aid for USMLE Step 1 isn’t whether to use First Aid (which everyone does), but how to use it correctly. These five tips will steer your study time and help you crush the exam.

Everyone who has taken boards gets First Aid. With my June/July test date quickly approaching, this is something I’m bookmarking for myself. 

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A slap in the face might be exactly what you need - The DO

The difficulty of med school hit me like a boulder rolling down a hill at top speed, but it also taught me a valuable lesson.

This. This is literally everything I went through but more eloquently-written than I could ever possibly write.

[thefuturedrfame]

I have never seen anything so accurate in my life.

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The most important part of your emergency medicine residency application - The DO

Michelino Mancini, DO, shares how students can stand out when applying and matching into emergency medicine residency programs.

Although unsure of what the future holds for DOs with the merger coming up in 2020, this is still an informative read.

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Recent News

Not news about my life, but about national headlines.

Recently, a former DO, Larry Nassar (whose license has since been revoked), was sentenced to 175 years in prison for being a molesting SOB. As soon as I saw that he was a DO, I knew that there would be someone, somewhere commenting about the fact that he was a DO and it would look bad on the profession.

And sure enough, this weekend, the LA Times published an op-ed that essentially called all DOs molesters, even calling the founder of the profession a “child abuser”. That article ignited in me an extreme anger that rarely ever comes out when reading news, and it brought back my doubt of being taken as seriously or seen as equally competent as an MD peer.

First off, the author herself isn’t even credible, with her “job” as a fact-checker being oxymoronically combined with her creationist views. Not only that, the article plays on the premise that COMMON SENSE DOESN’T OCCUR and that all DOs do osteopathic treatment without consent! It was just so idiotic! As with any doctor, a DO would normally get consent from the patient and explain the full purpose and procedure to the patient. I would also assume that if there was a potential situation that could be portrayed as sexual, like any other doctor, a DO would have someone of the opposite gender in the room whenever possible. But this article threw all of that common sense out the window, essentially going with the assumption that DOs don’t have basic medical etiquette and that they just directly perform treatments on patients without discussing it. 

Luckily, there has been an outpouring of support from many MDs and other medical professionals. The myriad of comments and videos that have been made explaining that, just because Mr. Nassar was an evil man doesn’t mean that all DOs are. 

And for all those people that wonder, here’s a video detailing some of the differences between DO vs MD, as told by a DO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHn6pers97Q **Note: as of 2020, there will no longer be two separate applications for residency, as stated in this video. This means that when I will be graduating in 2021, I will be applying for residency positions with all the other US MDs.

[thefuturedrfame]

It begins.

The length of time between this post and my last is indicative of how my life has become. A sad little cesspool of tears. The acceptance of being average. The realization that no amount of studying will help bring me up. Mediocrity...it sucks.

“Work smart, not hard” they say. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Working smart means you understand the system. In a semester where you have 5 different medical classes with 3 other semester-long fluff classes, you need to understand a lot of different “systems.” Each class is a new system and within that class is a bunch of mini-systems that accompany each of the teachers teaching that class. And this also begs the the statement that always clouds my mind: we’re working towards being exceptional doctors, not just beating the test. 

*Sigh* The test only determines our future. No big deal. The test only determines which residency we go to and where; and that “where” determines the most likely place we settle down with our family.

To be honest, the only people who are successful (that I know of), are the ones who can wake up early to get the start on their day at 5 o’clock in the morning. That’s what it takes, and I can’t seem to get my brain to turn on before 9am. 

It’s surprising to think that I’m almost 1/4 the way done with the didactics. 1/4 of the way through before taking one of the more, if not most, important tests of my life. I’m still navigating how to be successful in med school. Other people have adapted so well. Why am I so slow?

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Whirlwind of Emotions

So, it’s been exactly 2 weeks since the last post and it feels like I’ve lived a year. There have been happy times where I feel like it can’t get any better and then there’s days like today where I just cry to myself as I study something I just don’t really have the energy for. Welcome to medical school, right?

Well, we can start with the good because that was the start of the past two weeks. It was my birthday and I felt so loved by the outpouring of well-wishes from family and even the friends who i’ve only just met within the past two months. It was interesting to notice that I felt more love and happiness on this birthday than I did for my past birthdays where I got more presents. I guess it’s really is enough to just feel the love and caring over material things (though those things don’t hurt either, haha). 

Moving on to the week following my birthday, I spent an enormous amount of time studying for anatomy. This is my first time ever taking anatomy. I was genuinely interested in it and actually enjoyed studying. That leads me to the past week-ish. I was productive, everything went smooth, and everything seemed like it was as great as it could be. Studying wasn’t even bad. I felt like I was doing what I was meant to be doing. Everytime I get this feeling, it’s just like the best high ever - the high you feel when you’re being super efficient (though I can’t really speak for the other “highs” you feel since I’ve never experienced them). But everything was great. I was working towards a goal.

Then it came to this week, and it all came crashing down. I took my test and got my first failure in medical school. As I was going through the material, I kinda had a feeling I wouldn’t do very well. It just got to be too much material and I just didn’t seem to have the time to study for everything. This has legitimately made me scared for my future. Anatomy is one of the more important classes and I’m not standing afloat yet. It’s debilitating. I keep having to tell myself that I just have to keep on pushing. I just need to work hard and ace the final (which is worth more than this midterm) and I could still make it up. But really, I can’t shake this sadness I feel when I think about it every once in a while. 

And to make matters worse, I interviewed for an ambassador position at my school and didn’t get it. I’ve always known I wasn’t the best interviewer but I figured I was ok enough to get through a few medical school interviews coming out on top. But this just made me freak out even more. What about when I need to do residency interviews?! How am I gonna get that great job that I want if another candidate can out-interview me? I know that it’s just practice, practice, practice but it’s just so nerve-wracking and my true personality never comes out in interviews. I just don’t know how to put my best self forward and that has costed me. My other half is so great at them and it’s just even more frustrating that things like this can come so easily to other people. What is it? Is it the lack of socialization from my younger years that makes me unable to communicate well in interviews? How do you just force yourself to change how you are to become better for those 15-30 mins? I just don’t know...

All of this happened within the last day and it’s all just hitting me really hard today. I guess the realization has just really sunk in my head. Or maybe it’s the mix of ingesting an excess amount of caffeine today. Either way, I’m not sure how I’m doing. People are asking and I say I’m fine, but I’m not. I’m having my first bad day of medical school and as of now, I’m not quite sure how and when I’ll get over it.

P.S. I’m really sorry if this was such a depressing post. I’ll try to get happier soon.

[thefuturedrfame]

Congratulations! If you’re reading this you’ve probably matriculated into medical school and are trying to figure out which specialty might appeal to you.

As someone who has considered Emergency Medicine as a possible future specialty (though really, I’m not sure what I want to do yet), I found this article to be a great timeline of what is expected of a medical student wanting an EM residency.

Honestly, after reading it, I was surprised at how not rigorous it was. I was expecting to have to do so much more! Ergo, this article really made me feel more confident in my ability to be able to go towards the EM specialty, and not as a “reach” residency, but as a viable one.