You’ve made it to medical school, congrats! Admissions looked at you extremely thoroughly, analyzing nearly every element of the past few years of your life. They are confident that you’ll make a great doctor. Now they’re going to support you in every way they can to get you the residency spot that you want. At this point it’s seen as a failure of the school if you don’t make it, so take a deep breath and relax knowing that all the your school wants you to succeed. Continue reading 8 tips for first year medical students→
“You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? -Medicine.” -Tim Minchin
I hate alternative medicine. Absolutely despise it. I hate it not because of some belief that our current system of treating patients is flawless, nor because of a belief that medicine should be defined by pharmaceuticals, nor that all our current treatments are evidence-based and all-encompassing. No, the reason I hate ‘alternative’ medicine is that it implies a separation where there absolutely is none. It’s a meaningless, confused misconception that splits a common goal into two ambiguous non-categories. The goal of physicians is to care for patients and no concerned doctor is going to deliberately exclude any evidence based treatment at the risk of harming a patient.Continue reading Alternative to what?→
I have tried many times now to comprehend the Connecticut shooting and understand it well enough to put those thoughts into words. Frustration has prevented me from doing so. I will try my hardest to refrain from metaphors in this post but please excuse me if I slip. We have been trained our entire lives to tie so much emotion to everything that it makes it damn near impossible to actually comprehend the actual event in a logical manner. My frustration following the shooting was mostly due to people’s reactions to the incident. It was yet another thing that I watched tear my country apart. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone thought they knew what was best. And when it came to the actual shooter, words such as “evil” and “crazy” were thrown around without any authority. We dehumanize these killers and therefore make it impossible to see the potential for murder among ourselves. Continue reading Treating the problem→
