being a medical student Archives

Medicine by the Books

Keith Wong November 14, 2025 10 Comments

Brrring!

The landline in my call room trills, jolting me awake. I have a consult. I’m a third-year medical student on my internal-medicine rotation. This is my second overnight call and second week of clerkship.

“Hi, Keith!” the caffeinated resident chirps. “I have a consult for you!”

The patient is Ms. Carrera: a young woman with a history of diabetes, renal disease and a recent heart attack. She’s here because her legs hurt. Cardiology and nephrology have no explanation, so they called internal medicine—and by extension, me. My shoulders slump.

Turning the Tables

T.J. Spackman March 28, 2025 11 Comments

My iPhone screams me awake, as it does every morning. Recently this incessant screeching has become less irritating, as I’ve grown more accustomed to the demands that clinical education makes on a third-year medical student. I begin my routine: shower, scrubs, microwaved breakfast sandwich, then out into the dark morning, actually looking forward to my day.

I’ve been on a roll in my new family-medicine rotation, enjoying my time with my supervising doctor and learning quickly under her tutelage. It feels as if it’s coming together—the pages upon pages of textbooks and notes replaced by real patients and newfound responsibilities.

My Blankie

Anna Cmolik October 22, 2024 7 Comments

One evening, at the age of four, I ran frantically into my bedroom, tears burning in my eyes, and started overturning the furniture, peering under my bed and scrabbling through piles of clothes. I bounded back downstairs into the kitchen to check the chair I’d sat in for dinner. Over and over, I asked my four siblings and my parents:

“Have you seen my blankie?”

Finally, I retraced my steps to the piano bench. There sat my blankie, a soft, bright yellow mound. I let out a sigh of relief, safe at last, and headed off to bed.

Beyond the EMR

Anthony P. Gulotta September 20, 2024 8 Comments

Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….

I stood against a wall in a narrow hallway to avoid blocking a meal cart passing through on its morning voyage. Inside this cart were a series of compartments, each containing a tray bearing a hospitalized patient’s breakfast. My attending physician stood beside me, inspecting a list of patients’ names as the cart rolled past.

Squeak…Squeak…Squeak….

“That’s a good case for a med student,” my attending declared, gesturing at a name on the paper. “Take this one.”

A Phony Heterosexual

Samuel Streicher February 2, 2024 9 Comments

In my first year as a premedical student at the University of Rochester, I began working as an EMT (emergency medical technician).

I enjoyed the work, but my interactions with patients were necessarily fast-paced and fleeting. In September of my senior year, I explored a different side of medicine by volunteering at a local hospice house; there, engaging with patients and hearing their stories over time was a critical element of care.

Among the hospice patients, I connected especially to Jackson, a man in his sixties. Jackson’s voice, interests and punk style reminded me of my own grandfather, who had passed away just a year earlier.

Code Switching: Gravel Against Stone

Andrew C. January 2, 2024 11 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece was awarded an honorable mention in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

As a medical student, I have a habit of lowering my voice an extra octave when I speak with patients, preceptors or even my own primary-care physician. I like to imagine my voice as gravel grinding against stone, my raspy “whiskey voice” melting away any hint of my queer identity.

In these moments, I’m keenly aware of the way I walk and stand, the firmness of my handshake and the content of the small talk I make. There are no lights, no curtains or stage, but I am nonetheless performing.

No One Left to Save

Rachel Berlin December 15, 2023 11 Comments

“Do you want to call time of death?”

I stared up at my resident Hassan, shocked by his question. My stethoscope was still pressed to the elderly patient’s emaciated chest. Her agonal breaths, those last shallow breaths the body takes before death, had ceased. Only silence filled my ears.

Hassan smiled at me. I knew that he was offering this to me as a reward for all my hard work, but still, I was stunned.

Disposable

Barbara Meyer November 10, 2023 16 Comments

As a third-year medical student, I was two weeks into my trauma-surgery rotation when my resident casually called me “disposable.” I wasn’t offended—in fact, the word perfectly described how I’d been feeling. I also understood that it was no reflection on my performance; rather, it was a commentary on medical students in general.

Surgery was the first rotation of my third year—and, now that the COVID pandemic was winding down, it was also my first in-person clinical rotation.

I’d never been on the floors of the hospital. I felt clueless, underprepared and incompetent.

Invisibly Different

Anonymous September 12, 2023 11 Comments

Editor’s Note: This piece tied for first place in the Pulse writing contest, “On Being Different.”

“That seems like a dumb way to die.”

“Why would anyone choose to do that to themselves?”

I hear my medical-school classmates pose these questions as we learn about how an acetaminophen overdose can cause painful, fatal damage to the liver. How each metabolite can tear apart a liver cell. How it takes hours or even days for the full extent of the overdose to be felt.

I sit silently, uninterested in engaging in the conversation. My mind wanders back to the cold February night nearly fifteen years ago that brought me to my suburban emergency room.

Letter to Myself as a Third-Year Medical Student

Rebecca Grossman-Kahn December 23, 2022 16 Comments

At most medical schools, the first two years are spent in lectures, labs and classroom learning. The third year is when students begin rotating on various clinical teams in the hospital and clinics, finally seeing patients as part of a large educational medical team. As I moved through pediatrics, ob/gyn, surgery and other core rotations during my third year, I took notes at the times when I felt out of place or discouraged.

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