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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.

Fear of Flesh

Olivia Schreiber November 3, 2023 4 Comments

Sometimes I wish that skin and bones didn’t exist. Of course, that would be impossible—the skeleton is the scaffold for our bodies, while the skin is the insulation for vital organs such as the heart, kidneys and bowels. Without our skin and bones, we’d be mere piles of goo on the floor.

Bones are too complicated, for the simple reason that there are too many. As a first-year medical student studying anatomy, I agonized over learning the grooves and prominences where the muscles originate and insert into the bones. I always struggled to find these so-called bony landmarks on our simulated patients.

And flesh…the skin is even more horrifying than the bones beneath it.

My Superpower

Elizabeth Foley October 31, 2023 6 Comments

When I was six years old, my parents and I learned that I have type 1 diabetes.

As I grew up, revealing my diagnosis felt awkward and burdensome. Whenever I was in a public place and checked my blood sugar by pricking my finger, I often had to explain my illness to others, which led to unwelcome questions. To avoid this, I developed a habit of mentioning my disease swiftly, as if pulling off a Band-Aid.

Music and Medicine

Rachel Gaufberg September 22, 2023 15 Comments

It’s the end of a long day on Internal Medicine Ward H (“Hey” in Hebrew) at Soroka Medical Center, in the desert city of Be’er Sheva, Israel.

I’m a third-year medical student at the Medical School for International Health at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and this is the floor I’ve been assigned to for my six-week internal-medicine clerkship—my very first clinical rotation.

My fellow students and I wrap up our responsibilities for the day and head to the student room to gather our things. Stowing my stethoscope and notebook in my bag, I exchange it for my guitar, sitting in a dusty corner.

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.

Imposter Syndrome

Tashfeen Nasira August 15, 2023 11 Comments

According to a 2020 study, up to 82 percent of people experience imposter syndrome at some point in their lives. For some, the experience is fleeting; for others, it may hover in the background for a long time without ever being identified. That was the case with me.

Not many girls living in Pakistan get the opportunity to chase their ambitions as I have done. I was fortunate that my parents were more progressive than many: They always emphasized the importance of a woman’s financial independence and made sure I embraced every learning opportunity. When I decided to pursue medicine, though, they were hesitant, knowing that it would be a long, bumpy road.

The Black Dog

Julia Loosen July 28, 2023 9 Comments

It was a particularly sunny morning, and golden light streamed through the clinic windows. Seated in my preceptor’s office, I scanned her list of patients for the day. As a first-year medical student, I was to do preliminary interviews with some, and I hoped to find a few cases that would offer a chance to test my diagnostic reasoning.

The list held a lot of the usual–medication follow-ups, annual physicals, well-child checks—plus Ernest, a seventy-eight-year-old man who’d come into the emergency room for a urinary-catheter issue. This seemed promising, so I volunteered to see him.

Aftershocks

Darnell K. Adrian Williams Jr. June 30, 2023 16 Comments

It’s Monday. I wake up at 7:15 am, go down to my apartment building’s lobby and meet with friends to work out before the rest of the day begins. We do arms, chest and back for an hour, then my friend PJ and I hit the steam room and head back to our apartments.

I call my mom for five minutes, then shower, dress and, before breakfast, knock out some flashcards on my laptop, like any self-respecting first-year medical student.

Today I’m spending a shift in the ER as part of my clinical-medicine class.

Role Reversal

Brooke Upchurch May 5, 2023 18 Comments

The year 2020 was a lot of things for a lot of people. Chaotic, exhausting, heartbreaking, hopeful. It was a year in which my immense privilege—as a healthy, educated white woman—protected me from much of the pain born by others.

And while it was many of those things (especially chaotic) for me, it was also the year I started medical school. The year I moved from LA to Austin, driving across California, Utah and Texas in the process. The year I read fifty-four fiction books to escape the monotony of lockdown.

And it was the year my dad died.

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: medical student stories

A Phony Heterosexual

Code Switching: Gravel Against Stone

No One Left to Save

Disposable

Fear of Flesh

My Superpower

Music and Medicine

Invisibly Different

Imposter Syndrome

The Black Dog

Aftershocks

Role Reversal

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: medical student stories

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