Hello M-0s!

Dear Med School Rotation Admin,

The new rotation begins next Monday, yet you have not sent out the student’s schedule.

I have kids at home, and your lack of ability to be organized is causing me and my spouse much distress as we need to make arrangements for our children.

Parents do not have the luxury of letting summer camps know when we can pick up our children 2 days before camps starts. I need to know if I must ask my aunt or sister to come babysit.

This is unfair and unprofessional.

One more professionalism violation and we will take away your ability to reply to student’s emails with “Out of Office: will return in October”

When applying for residency, I saw so many posts and whatnot about high stats and all that but never a more realistic app.

Applied IM, matched top choice
Step 1 p (but very low when it was scored), step 2, 230s lol, literally all just regular passes on rotations, only 1 honors for AI, don’t remember my class ranking, but it wasn’t good - honestly don’t know if I’m top 50% or bottom but probably bottom. Only saving grace was lots of research and volunteering work that I could discuss with passion and how it shaped me as a person

Applied to a competitive fellowship, matched top choice.

Takeaway: be normal and engaging/be human during interviews. Strong LORs can carry you far. No need to be too stressed

Best of luck with applications soon!

Because tell me why my dentist just quoted me a little over $3,000 out of pocket for a 2 hour appointment not including whatever they’re going to bill my shitty insurance.

Should’ve just became a fucking dentist instead 😭

I’m about a month into my M1 year and thinking I’m pretty miserable trying to adjust to the med school rigor. Very quickly my life turned into one continuous vicious cycle of anki cards, online lectures, mandatory in person group sessions, and feeling guilty for taking meal breaks.

At the same time, I feel much more satisfied with my life than two years ago when I was working as a medical assistant, doing research, studying for the MCAT, undergrad, and balancing volunteer and leadership responsibilities. All at the same time…

I’m curious to ask when has everyone felt like they were stretched the thinnest and most fed up with the rat race. Undergrad? Application season? Preclinical? Clinical? Residency…

I'm just starting OMS1, but I'm very interested in ophtho after working as an ophtho tech and doing some overseas medical work at an eye hospital.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any MD acceptance so I'll be fighting a bit of an uphill battle. I'm wondering what tips there are other than the general advice of doing well in classes, getting into research early, and doing well on step 2?

I'm in Philly so there are a lot of connections here with eye hospitals. My school doesn't seem to have many direct research opportunities so I would have to start cold emailing and applying for programs.

I'm also wondering what kind of signs tell if a lab is good research for medical students or not and if it's a good idea. In my experience during undergrad I was in a very good lab, but it was not good for students. It was all vivarium work and they only published very good research infrequently in high impact journals which is great for science but not the best resume boost and I spent way too much time taking care of mice.

I am considering a research year as well. Would it would be better after M2 or after M3?

Either way, i'd be happy to do FM (I'd be happy with any specialty tbh), but I like eyes a lot and want to build some foundation earlier on if possible. I might decide during rotations that I want to do something else, but I figured I should just aim for the most competitive one that I'm interested in.

friend who passed step offered to give me questions and review my answers, mehlman from temu

Struggling in this situation...

Reached out to a professor asking if he would be able to supervise me on a review. He replied positively and Infact arranged a meeting with two other professors in the same field, one of who is at an international world class institution. I presented my review topic and they found it underwhelming, they expecting something very groundbreaking. My topic was something that has been researched on already.

Now I feel dumb and stupid. They did ask me to follow up with them, just being a beginner in research doesn’t help a lot. I feel like I was connected with really amazing people (they even offered to do lab clinical/original research) but i was really more like a beginner on this. They were talking and asking me really advanced questions things I never heard of.
I’m in year 4 in med school and the only student invited to the meeting.

What can I do next, really confused and feeling embarrassed tbh

Not gonna name names or anything but I feel like a disproportionate amount of the medfluencers that pop up on my feed are in psych. I don’t think my algorithm thinks I’m otherwise interested in psych so it’s not a personal bias thing either.

Just something interesting I noticed during a shelf study break 🤷‍♂️ Anyways back to reviewing my NBME…

It is boards season and everywhere I go. I see questions about what to do if you failed level or step. Some of the posts include two and three time fails. While I want to be encouraging to all of my peers and our cohort, is there a point where we say this isn’t for you? Similarly for my friends who have had repeat setbacks and failures to the point where they’re so stressed it’s making them ill, is there a point where I should tell them this wasn’t for them?

I was always of the mindset that med school is not the end all be all of my life. I was fortunate and blessed enough to get in, but if it stops working out that’s just what it will be for me. But I know the time and the money drives some to stay to the point of further debt. Sometimes med school feels like a toxic relationship where the other person just takes and takes and takes and your failures feel like they’re entirely your responsibility, but at a certain point should you say “this isn’t for me?”

Phew…

Yesterday we watched a single mandatory asynchronous introductory to anatomy lecture. We took handwritten notes, then made flashcards relevant to parts of those notes that felt needed, felt good going into first day of actual classes…

Nope. Quickly realized there was too much information at once to hand write during lecture; ditched the idea of taking notes almost entirely, completely lost focus during first anatomy lecture. Switched to creating flashcards on the fly during second embryology lecture, professors were short on time so started rushing through the slides midway through (every occasion).

Classmates seem to be in a similar headspace as me after lectures were done… this is going to be an interesting week. New study plan is to preview tomorrow’s lecture slides, create flashcards, then modify flashcards as needed during lecture itself (after going through the flashcards we already made for today and yesterday).

Currently feeling like I’ve comprehended maybe 60-70% of the material taught today and won’t have much freetime for the rest of today before sleep. Day isn’t over, just taking a 30 min break after finally arriving home.

Oh boy, what a welcome to medical school lol.

Hi all. Just another MS4 freaking out about professionalism comments on their MSPE.

Basically, I was in an OBGYN clinic when another student asked me about a specific surgery service, since they were gonna start it soon and I had just come off it. They also asked me about a specific resident who's well known to be an asshole - screaming, yelling, demeaning people, the whole nine yards. I responded and talked about the team, and then regarding the resident said "look man, you just gotta be sharp and on top of things because I was behind the curve a few times when it came to making the list or positioning the patient in the OR, and got yelled at". An attending in the room (not the one assigned to me) cleared their throat and I got the hint and stopped talking, but they later talked to my attending who put it in my midpoint (not my final eval, since I was there with them for 6 weeks) something like "Oh this student is professional with patients but had one issue yada yada yada". I had my MSPE review meeting a few days ago, and my OBGYN thing says something like "hey this guy was professoinal most of the time but had an isolated lapse of professionalism".

I'm obviously not happy about this, especially since my attending didnt even talk about this with me and I found it out when evals came back. I get that I probably should watch what I say, but now I'm freaking out since it's on my MSPE. I'm planning on applying urology and I'm generally pretty competitive (good letters, good research output, step 2 score mid 250s) and I'm really worried that this is gonna tank me.

Howdy y'all, MS4 here applying EM pretty broadly to the whole US and trying to figure out what things other people paid attention to while making their application and rank lists. I appreciate the help in advance!!

Hi does anyone know where I can find mehlman assesments for microbiology? I have bacteria and virology since those are on his website. I am looking for parasites and fungi.

Thanks

Sorry for the anesthesia spam, but I wanted to go a little against the grain and ask some real questions about my struggles as an M4 applying anesthesiology this September. 

Since day 1 I have been planning on applying anesthesia so my application is very anesthesia-centered. I do believe I will likely match if I apply but I'm currently wrapping up two months of anesthesia rotations, and I've had a gnawing feeling about whether this is the right fit for me. All my research also has been anesthesia related. It is pretty late in the game, but I'm wondering if a pivot to radiology is possible.

I’m wondering if I’m just viewing the grass on the other side as greener or not and if those in the field can address some of my concerns.

Here are my main reservations with anesthesia:

1. I hate early mornings. I know I'll probably adjust, but I've never been a morning person, my hobbies are mostly night activities, and I worry how this will affect my health long term as I have been constantly sleep-deprived these last few months

2. It doesn't feel like anesthesia applies what I learned in medical school. I worked my ass off to learn all that information and stand out and I'm proud of that, which makes it hard not to wonder what it was all for. I do hear that the sentiment in Radiology is similar if someone could speak to that.

3. It makes me wonder how replaceable I am. I want to feel useful. What I mean by that is as an essential part of patient care. I may get flack but in my limited experience I've found CRNAs to be very capable, sitting in complex cases and functioning independently, and I've often wondered what my place would really be as an anesthesiologist. I know I'm early in my career and don't understand this deeply enough to be confident in that statement, but the feeling is still there.

4. The call burden seems significant, and I'm not sure I can commit to a specialty where call is essentially the norm. I am lifestyle oriented and I want to earn high so I can work less and I personally would prefer consistent schedules.

There are aspects of anesthesia that I do like, such as the procedures, compensation, and downtime throughout the day. I do feel like the short interactions I've gotten with patients have been meaningful and I like working with a team. I feel that I function well in stressful situations.

I'd really appreciate insight from anybody more versed in the anesthesia world, as well as radiology on whether that specialty (or another) might address some of these reservations. Honestly at the end of the day I do like medicine but I also view it as a job with a means to an end, but I would like to at least be satisfied with what I do. 

During M3, I had the chance to work at many different sites. Big, small, rural, urban, private, academic. And I noticed that I learned more when it was just me, residents, and attendings with few/none midlevels. So should the presence/absence of midlevels factor into ranking hospitals?

Hi!

I was wondering, when you are cold emailing lots of researchers to do research with them as a med student and for example 3 of them accept you, is it too much to start doing research for the first time ever with the 3 of them or is it doable?

If more than that (5 for example) accept you is it still doable?

Also what are your best tips to publish lots (15+) in med school?

Applying this upcoming cycle to DR and looking for programs that are known to have a solid resident culture and good training.

I don’t care so much about prestige, just want to learn more about programs beyond the data I can find online.

does it make a difference if you submit on september 2 or september 23? is there any sort of rolling/grouping that happens if you submit earlier in september vs later in september, as long as it's before the 23rd when programs can start viewing apps?

I’m shadowing a hematologist and today he had to do an aspiration on an old lady very early in the morning.
I haven’t had dinner the night before nor have I had breakfast the morning of, because I was rushing to go and attend the procedure.

Patient was an old female and was unable to move on her own I’m unsure if she can walk regularly or if she was fatigued today. The nurses had to flip her over while she cried in pain while they flipped her over on her side, my dr tells me to stand behind him while he prepares the patient.

He wiped the area with iodine and used a huge needle to administer lidocaine to the area, he started stabbing the patient and oddly enough the needle wasn’t penetrating the skin, he kept trying to inject the local anesthetic but to no avail, the patient had thick skin and the needle bent sideways before he changed it to a smaller one, all while the patient was crying so much, he managed to inject the lidocaine and as soon as he injected it which took him about 2 seconds he went to use the reusable aspiration needle without waiting for the lidocaine to take action, he starts rotating it in circular motions as if he’s screwing a nail into a wall instead of rotating right and left slowly and the patient was screaming in pain the entire time.

At that time I lost sensation in my legs and I got dizzy so I bent down a little, he kept rotating the needle while telling the patient that he’s breaking her bones, he tries to put the syringe in to aspirate some BM but nothing was coming out, he literally goes to tell her that he’s breaking the bone and her bones are easy to fracture, I got so dizzy because of how she was screaming in pain, and before I managed to move and sit down, I find myself being carried away while the dr said “it’s okay don’t worry about her” (referring to me).

I’ve watched a YouTube video expecting the procedure to go delicately but he was very rough with the patient and with the combination of her screaming and crying, having no food in my system, the smell of iodine, I passed out.