May 23rd, 2016
My Third Day in Greece
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
1) At one point today in the Idomini refugee camp, I was playing catch with a beautiful baby girl in between some of the tents. She could not have been much older than my own daughter and, like my daughter, would throw the ball backwards over her head instead of towards me and then would giggle for a bit before repeating it again… I could see her father and siblings smiling and watching me play with her; I walked over and began listening to their story. The father spoke to me warmly about how happy he was to meet us and how difficult it is to be refugees for him and his family in the camps. He talked about the near absence of medical care, edible food, and safety. He talked about how far they had come, how their home no longer existed in the city of Yarmulke because it was obliterated during Assad air strikes, and how uncertain every day was. He mentioned how one of his sons went nearly mute from fear of the bomb blasts and now only says a few words… He smiled and said kind words despite the misery he spoke of. At one point he joked: “I invited everyone over last night for a great party — it was so great that the wind made the walls of my tent dance until 
they fell over.”
2) Today we entered a new camp called BP/Hara (named after its location on a BP gas station and the parking lot of the Hara hotel). We treated about 50 patients out of the back of our van full of donated meds and supplies. Syrians, Kurds, Afghanis, and even some Pakistanis, all lined up hoping we could relieve some ailment or suffering. Often we could only provide some ibuprofen, bandage a wound, or treat a fever… It was not complex medicine, but it was something. Sometimes it feels as though all we are really delivering is a tiny bit of dignity and humanity in the few moments we are with them. Other times, it feels as though we did not do anything at all. It is a difficult set of realities to process.
3) Super heroes exist. I’ve seen them. Today a man pulled up in front of the camp in an RV he owned. His name is Ramees, and he is a physician from the U.K. Every so often, he flies from the U.K. to Romania, where he has his RV parked, drives down to Greece with his vehicle stocked with meds/supplies, and opens his doors and heart to the refugees. He is a one-man show who does this because it is who he is. He has already been here for a couple of weeks and plans on a few more days before he returns home.
I meet people like him and feel ashamed about how little I’ve done. This man (and there are many men and women like him), has sacrificed immense amounts family time, money, general comforts, and heart to come in and give something of himself to people he’s never met and probably will never see again. He gives me hope that, despite all of the terrible things in this world, there are still people like him who put it all on the line to make a difference.
4) I am more and more convinced that everyone needs to come and see the Syrian refugee crisis for themselves. These words and pictures mean nothing in comparison to staring into the eyes of a human being who has lost everything and wants nothing except to just have a chance at a normal life. I cannot convey the hurt and tears and fear and pain in a post. I cannot make you understand what I feel when I put my hand on the head of a child who has lost his parents or an arm around a man who has been stripped of his honor. I cannot convey the loneliness and hopelessness of knowing you will sleep in a tent on concrete tonight and the next night and so on… there are no words for these things.
May 22nd, 2016
My Second Day in Greece
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
1) The following are real conversations the team has had with patients/refugees in our short time here:
Young lady who came in with urinary symptoms:
“How old are you?”
“I am 27 years old… I hope this is the last year of my life.”
Teenage male:
“I have to get out of here. I’ve spent 3 months of my life living in a tent in a gas station… I couldn’t even imagine living in a normal house anymore. I need to find a way out.”
Middle-aged woman who presented with complaints of headache and belly pain for a year:
When I asked her if she could tell me if there was a specific event that happened a year prior when the symptoms started, she forced a smile as tears ran down her face.
“A lot happened. I have not been home for 5 years now.”
After listening to her and doing a full exam, I told her that her symptoms were likely related to her stress and she nodded… More tears fell: “I haven’t slept in a very long time.”
2) We visited the Idomini refugee camp today. More than 10000 people live in a field, in tents with no running water except a few faucets located between a line of porta-potties. The ground is full of sharp rocks and gravel, and the refugees often have very little to lay down to cushion themselves when they sleep. Children, like the ones below, wander the camp doing what all children do. They play. They laugh. They fight with each other. They joke. They misbehave. They run. They have no idea that the reality they live is not the reality of the rest of the world. The entire world for a Syrian refugee child involves his/her experience of life isolated to having nothing and doing everything just to survive.
3) A teenager came to us with an injured foot related to a shrapnel injury he suffered 5 months prior while in Syria. It was clear he needed a surgical intervention — his foot was swollen and was extremely painful to walk on. I asked around — What do we do with people in this situation? Where do we send them? Who do we ask? Now what? The answer was painful: There is nothing we can do. There is no where he can go. We cannot help him… And nobody will be able to help him, because there are thousands like him… Thousands of people who have chronic medical issues with no avenue for acquiring treatment. They are, essentially, unworthy, in the collective eyes of the world, to be treated like human beings.
4) “Sharafna,” a boy called out to us as we left the camp. Roughly translated it means, “you have honored us by being here.” I wanted to reply in shame, “That’s impossible. The world is not deserving of any kind words from the Syrian refugees.”
May 21st, 2016
My First Day in Greece
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
I am participating in the SAMS (Syrian American Medical Society) medical mission in Greece.
1) Loneliness is truly the darkest consequence of this crisis. The Syrian people haven’t just been kicked out of their homes. They were stripped away from their neighborhoods, friends, and family via death, destruction, sickness, and tough decisions that they had to make about splitting up loved ones to preserve their chances of survival. We saw many patients today who had no one. No parents, spouses, siblings, or children. They didn’t have to tell me. I could see it in their eyes. The material goods they have lost are immense, but pale in comparison to what else has been taken away from them. They walk alone in this world.
2) A bunch of conversations I had today with co-volunteers included the word ‘resilience.’ These people are awe-inspiring in their ability to be dealt a life of dirt and then to turn around and produce a garden. They make tents feel like home, plastic tables feel like a dining hall, and a gas station feel like a community. Let me explain that last portion: The EKO refugee camp is literally located on the property of an EKO gas station (picture included, so you can try to understand the absurdity of this). Simple camping tents laid out on concrete between and around gas pumps and the station’s convenience store. 3000 people live at this gas station…. 3000! HALF are children (around 500 are younger than 2!!).
3) A reflection inspired by my co-volunteer, Ammar Idelbi: It is summer in Greece, and the weather can get uncomfortably warm during clinic hours which are at midday. The clinic, which is an artificial outdoor space between two parked vans with a tarp overhead, occasionally gets a nice gust of wind which carries a taste of coolness that all the staff members appreciate. We pause and enjoy the air passing through our hair and take a moment to soak it in. The exact same ‘breeze’ we lavish in can be a nightmare for the refugees living in the EKO camp. Even a mild wind gust lifts their untethered temporary abodes off the ground and blows all of their remaining belongings this way and that. It makes a mess. It is a microcosm of their current life realities. They live moment to moment, not knowing if the next ‘thing’ is a blessing that relieves them or a hardship that afflicts them. All they can do is hold on tight and hope they don’t get blown away. 
May 20th, 2016
Traveling Can Be Frustrating
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
Note from the NEJM Journal Watch staff — Ahmad Yousaf is currently on a trip to help care for refugees in Greece. He is sending daily updates to share his thoughts; we will be posting them here daily.
The discomforts of travel are real. Stress, related to the unknown: flight times, traffic to the airport, crying babies, ‘random’ security checks … Being alone, away from my wife and kid. It’s annoying. And uncomfortable. And a little sad.
Travel is frustrating … Even when you are the one who planned it. As I travel to Greece, I sit in the airplane thinking about the privilege of having those discomforts.
Greece is not the home of Syrian refugees either … but they didn’t plan the trip that got them there. Bombs and bullets booked their tickets. Flight times do not worry them; finding a safe place to live does. Traffic is not a concern; starvation and dirty water are. The sound of crying babies is not something they get annoyed by, it’s something they yearn for. The loneliness they feel is not as temporal as a planned itinerary, it has been made permanent. This is the reality of the Syrian refugees in Greece. Permanent travelers. Permanent strangers with seemingly permanently discomforts. Their homesickness is not like mine … Because I still have a home to return to.
I’m praying for the Syrian refugees. Praying for their homeland as it was and as it is now. It is the least I can do.
May 13th, 2016
“Be Careful. He’s Violent.”
Briana Buckner, MD
Briana Buckner, MD, is a 2015-16 Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
“Be careful. He’s violent.” That was the way sign out began for Mr. T. The intern continued, “He has been in the hospital forever because he was kicked out of his nursing home. Good luck. And, oh yeah… he’s blind.” Puzzled, I looked at my list of patients and, not sure whether I should write “violent” by this patient’s name, I decided instead to write “blind.” I paused. The intern said, “Don’t worry, he hit someone with his cane. When you enter his room, just keep your eye on the cane.”
The next morning, as I approached the room, I was nervous and unsure of what to expect. When I knocked on the door I was greeted sharply with a bit of a grunt and a quick “Is that my breakfast tray?” I quickly responded ‘no’ and that I was the new doctor on the team. Knowing that a hungry patient can be tricky to warm up, I decided to sit down first. I found a very tall African American man sitting near the window, listening to the radio. Mr. T appeared much older than his stated age, and he wore a spirit of fatigue that was heavy and ominous. I could also sense his strong feelings of distrust, which I often see in African American patients, but his inability to see his surroundings presented an even higher barrier for me to climb.
During my first two days of taking care of Mr. T, I didn’t examine him. I just sat there with him. Shamefully telling my attending on both days that the patient was on his way to dialysis when asked why I was unable to examine him. I knew he felt violated and distrustful, so I wanted to wait for him to trust me. First, I started with asking about the music he enjoyed, since he was always listening to the radio. Through his love of music, I begin to learn about his life. I found out that he grew up in the foster care system, that he had been homeless for a year, and that, at the young age of 40, he lost his vision due to diabetes.
While getting to know Mr. T, I also began to learn the dynamics of the unit. Mr. T had been labeled as violent and there was no turning back. The nurses didn’t take to Mr. T, and he didn’t like the nurses. The doctors stayed away from his room and only entered with a quick hello in the early morning during rounds. The most striking thing I observed was how people would talk about Mr. T very loudly near his room and as he walked the halls, as if he were both deaf and blind. The nursing assistants would say loudly, “I had Mr. T yesterday, I want a different patient today.” The phlebotomists would ask the nurse next to his open door, “Is this the blind man? Do you think he will let me get his blood today?” I often would get a frantic call to Mr. T’s room to find him in a yelling match with a team member about his food tray and why his breakfast never came before dialysis. At first, I didn’t understand: This was not the gentle Mr. T that I knew from our afternoon chats. But then, I realized that it was.
I realized that Mr. T’s greatest problem was that he didn’t feel in control. He could not see, he was in unfamiliar surroundings, and his housing security had disappeared abruptly. One day, after I was able to calm him down from yet another shouting match with food services, I finally asked him, “Mr. T, why are you so angry today?” He said to me, “I hear how y’all talk about me around here. These people come in my room with an attitude and an opinion of me before they even meet me. And y’all wonder why I’m so angry. I just want to be able to get my breakfast before I go to dialysis. I come back 4 hours later, hungry and tired. Don’t you get your food when you want it?”
I had no response to make. Although I did not know all of the background about what had caused his displacement, I knew we were failing him. Failing him as a team, as a unit, and as a healthcare system. I also questioned how we formed our opinion of him in the unit. Were most of our opinions and feelings toward him formed before we even met him? Did we let our professionalism level slip as a medical unit because of our biased opinions? Isn’t true professionalism defined by our insignificant daily activities? We were anchored into our opinion of him as violent, similar to how to a doctor can be anchored in a diagnosis of pneumonia. When presented with new information on Mr. T, were we able to reassess our position towards him?
With time, Mr. T begin to mellow out and became less angry about his breakfast. Less because he trusted the staff and more as a sign of defeat because the prospect of him finding a long-term home became dimmer. His fear, which initially was displayed as anger, transitioned more into withdrawal and quiet spirit. Despite this change in spirit, the unit continued to label him as “angry” and, each shift, the nurses and doctors would sign out, “He’s violent. Watch his cane.” Without any mention of his distrust, loss of control, and the effects that his vision impairment had on his interactions with the staff.
Finally, a nurse came up to me and said, “I don’t know how you deal with Mr. T. He seems to only like you.” Frustrated with the stigma surrounding my patient, I wanted to ask everyone on the unit, “Why have we let our professionalism suffer when faced with the demands of a difficult patient?” But I was too exhausted and weathered from the dynamics of the situation. I simply answered, “I’m not sure either.”
May 6th, 2016
Declaration of Death
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
“Is he dead?”
I stepped up closer. He was yellow. Bright yellow. Steve had been admitted to the hospital for altered mental status when his last PET Scan revealed that the pancreatic cancer had spread from the tail of his pancreas into his liver where it now blocked the ducts that carried the bile out of his body and left him jaundiced. I had been paged a few minutes earlier by a frantic nurse who told me that the patient had stopped breathing. It was 1AM and although I could have been asleep, I was in my 2nd month of residency and too scared to rest my eyes. I rode the elevator up to the 9th floor with almost no idea of what I was going to do if, in fact, he was no longer breathing.
I had received sign-out from the day team that the patient was on inpatient hospice and ‘no heroic measures’ were to be taken if his heart stopped beating overnight. “Heroic measures?” I thought to myself. What did that mean? Thoughts of Superman performing super effective chest compressions and pushing epinephrine crossed my mind. The elevators opened, and I walked toward his room.
Earlier in the evening, I had introduced myself to his family who had been sitting by their dying father and husband. I had tried to smile warmly but was afraid I came off as an insensitive, grinning madman. I probably had stayed too long to overcompensate for my awkward smile; I had rambled about things that didn’t really matter. I almost made a joke… then thought better of it. I had ended the torturous encounter with a “so sorry” (I was not sure if I was apologizing or just searching for any words to fill the void) and a “if you need anything at all …” After fleeing the room I prayed to God that this patient would not die on my time. Unfortunately, my prayer was not answered that night.
Now, I stepped into Steve’s room and quickly realized that it was no longer his. It smelled of death, and I felt like I was walking into a room frozen in time. I had this eerie sense that I was walking in right after another had left with something more valuable. The silence was profound… except that there was something… I heard the sound of breathing. I approached his bed, and then I saw her. His wife had pulled up a chair next to him and was fast asleep, unaware of her husband’s passing. I stared at Steve and then back at his wife. How long should I leave them like this? She needs to know… but how terrible a thing to wake her up to the worst news of her life. I did not want to be the one to do that. I was supposed to be a preventer of death…
“Pssst!” The nurse was now at the door trying to get my attention. I looked over and shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what to do. “You have to tell her,” she whispered sharply, “you have to pronounce him dead!”
My confusion must have been apparent because she rolled her eyes and said, “You need to listen to him and give him a time of death!” I nodded as if I knew that already. Much later, I heard about another intern in a similar predicament — she had been told that she was to pronounce a patient dead. She entered the room, which was full of the deceased’s family and stated loudly, “I now pronounce you dead!” She then exited hurriedly and told the nurse that the ‘pronouncement ceremony’ was over.
I exited the room and told the nurse to give me a second. I pulled out my Intern Manual and found the section about how to pronounce a patient dead. The manual told me to listen for heart sounds with my stethoscope placed on patient’s chest for an entire minute and, if heart sounds were absent, I should pronounce the patient dead and document the time of death in the chart. I re-entered the room with a bit more confidence and looked at the sad portrait in front of me — a loving wife lying with her beloved husband. It felt like a dream. I observed her chest rise and fall with every breath and his stay so motionless. He looked far more at rest than she did; her brow was furrowed, the area around her eyes dark with circles of worry and sleep deprivation. I moved close to her and placed my hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am… Ma’am.” She stirred a little… I glanced back at the nurse in the entrance of the room and realized she was growing more and more impatient. “Ma’am… we need to talk.” Her eyes began to open slowly as she rose to consciousness and then, suddenly, she sat up…
“Is he dead?”
The words hurt me. As if she had thrown bricks into my chest. I could not find the yes that was buried somewhere between my heart and my throat… I nodded. She let out a deep sigh and with it, tears fell from her eyes.
“I’m… I’m sorry.” Those words again. I really do not know why they always seem to fall out of my mouth in moments of perplexity. I stood there for a while watching the two of them. Watched her wrap her arms around him and speak to him as though he would answer. The nurse came in. She went over to Steve’s wife and asked her if there was anyone she wanted to contact. The nurse got a number and left the room. I still had not moved. This was the first patient I had ever pronounced dead. I looked at the clock: 1:54AM. That would go into a record somewhere, because I had stated it was the time he died. The moment was heavy… heavier than I had ever anticipated. I was no longer one who just tried his best to prevent death; I was now also an announcer of its arrival.
April 27th, 2016
The Dark Side of Medicine
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
The following is paraphrased documentation, authored by a physician I know, regarding an intoxicated patient in the ER:
1AM: Patient is telling nurse, “Before I leave, I need everyone’s name for my lawsuit. Tell the phlebotomist that if he’s good, he’ll get a cut.”
1:40AM: Patient is making inappropriate sexual comments and is verbally aggressive with medical staff. He is advised to stay in bed.
2:02AM: Patient (who had been sleeping comfortably) wakes up and begins screaming obscenities at everyone. When a nurse asks why he was angry, he says, “What do you think , mother f*****? I will wipe your a**.” Multiple attempts to calm patient fail.
I will stop here, because the insulting language, obscene physical gestures, and eventual threats of physical abuse only become more vulgar and inappropriate. The attending recorded in the chart, word for word, the things that spewed from the patient’s mouth and, eventually, when he became physically aggressive, called the Crisis Team who came and restrained the patient. The story was shared with me by one of the residents who had witnessed the entire discourse, and we laughed about the absurdity of some of the drunken babble. We also smiled in speaking about the state of mind of the doc who documented the conversation so meticulously in the chart. She must have just had it with the abuse and decided she was going to permanently record all the nonsense in the EMR.
As I sat by myself, thinking about the somewhat comical story, I realized that it really was not funny at all. This is the status quo. Healthcare professionals deal with patients like the one above every day. The verbal abuse and physical threats are so common that we have settled in to just trying to find some humor in them. This type of abuse is not unique to the healthcare field, but the difference is that you cannot just stop treating your abuser. You have to make sure he or she gets better… You cannot fire a patient in an ER who would die in the street if you kicked him out. Every doc or nurse has an anecdote in which they have been spit on, urinated on, cursed at, assaulted, or threatened.
In the medical world, we do not talk a lot about this aspect of our training and experience. Incoming residents have no idea that, along with their medical education, they will be getting a pedagogy in dealing with some seriously aggressive personalities. Whether it is a drunk patient in the ED, an angry family member, or the overtly psychotic patient on the psych ward, being on guard becomes second nature.
I remember one resident laughing hysterically as he described an enraged patient using the TV remote as weapon against his caretakers, swinging it in circles like a lasso. Or the time a family member broke into the medical lounge and attempted to physically intimidate a resident into changing a medical plan for a dying patient in the ICU. I have seen female trainees and attendings cat-called, harassed (both physically and verbally), and made to feel unsafe by the people they care for. It is tough to diagnose and treat someone when you cannot put your hands on them without fear of a violation of personal space.
This is medicine. There is so much beauty in the patient-doctor relationship and so much that I could say about the wonderful people whom I have learned from and loved while they were under my care. But, like anything else in life, medicine has a dark side that we rarely discuss with people outside of the field. With an increasing percentage of doctors feeling unappreciated, abused, and depressed, maybe it is time to share the whole story (N Engl J Med 2016 Apr 28; 374:1661).
Please share your experiences.
P.S. God bless nurses, who deal with this stuff even more often than docs do.
April 8th, 2016
The Costs of Being a Doctor
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
I start this article with a disclaimer: I am not here to comment on the decreasing salaries of physicians or the knowledge that I will never get paid the way the prior generation of doctors got paid. It is hard for me (and the American public) to feel bad for anybody making more than $200K a year when the median household income is in the mid-$40K range.
BrendelSignature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Median_Incomes_US.png), CC BY-SA 3.0
What this article is about is the absurd costs of becoming a doctor (both in medical school and residency)! Let me tell you my story to put things in perspective:
I went to a state undergraduate university and, thankfully, left that school with no debt. I then entered a public medical school, with no way of paying the tuition on my own. I faced the decision of taking out loans or dropping medicine and doing something else. I stuck with it — like many of my colleagues — because I could not imagine NOT being a doctor… and honestly, I was naive about the financial hardships I would undergo. I lived at home for 2 of the 4 years of med school, was single for 3 of those 4 years, had no kids, and had amazing parents that subsidized my living arrangement with home cooked meals and car insurance payments.
Despite that, at the end of my med school education, I had acquired $180,000 in loans (close to the national average), almost all of them with an interest rate of 6.8%. To put that into perspective: My monthly interest accrual was ~$1020 a month, and good old Aunty Sallie would capitalize the interest into the principal at the end of every year! Then came residency. Finally a salary of my own… or so I thought. The average resident’s salary starts between $40K and $50K a year. At 70 to 80 hours a week of work, that comes out to $9.50 to $12 an hour. Most residencies prohibit moonlighting (for reasons beyond my comprehension), so the money you get from your institution is the ONLY money you get.
I live in northern Jersey, where monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment is around $1000-$1400… a 2-bedroom ranges between $1500 and $2400. I… lived in a 1-bedroom. I cleared about $3000 a month after taxes. $1000 went to paying just the interest on my loans and never touching the principal, and $1200 went to paying rent. I was left with $800 to spend on food ($100-$300, thank God for a mother and mother-in-law who have phenomenal cooking skills), gas ($160), car payments ($200) because you cannot move between three hospitals on public transportation, insurance payments ($200), cell phones ($80) with no landline, internet ($50), and, well… there is no money left. So, I guess I could have just paid the minimum on my loans and have had money for heat and electricity. Problem is, that after 5 years of residency, I would have owed Ms. Mae close to ~$250,000.
This is the thing… I was better off than many residents. I had parents who gave me money when I was short and paid my EZPass bills. I went to a public undergrad school(many people I know have debts in the $350K range when starting residency). I never had any large unexpected costs during my training (e.g., medical bills, big car bills/accidents). For much of my training, I was not yet a parent. Residency sucks… and not just because of the intensity of the training and the stress of trying your best to become a decent physician.
This article is not over yet. The real impetus for me to write this has to do with the loads of money I recently dumped to fulfill the next step of my “training.” What many people outside of medicine might not know about are the enormous costs of tests/licensing that doctors are REQUIRED to complete/obtain/maintain to practice medicine. USMLE Step 1,2,3 tests cost about $2200. The American Board of Internal Medicine exam costs about $1200, and the American Academy of Pediatrics board exam costs a whopping $2250. Most residents spend about $1000 to $2000 on prep courses and materials for each of these exams WHILE IN residency. And then, there is licensing: NJ state license is about $1100, the DEA/CDS licenses cost another $760, and there are others, depending on your practice. All of this occurs BEFORE you make ‘doctor money,’ all while your student loans continue to grow.
My concern is not for my own misery…. that time has passed. My concern has to do with the next generation of physicians who have already started pre-med tracks in their undergrad colleges. What type of candidates will medicine attract when the associated costs of becoming a doctor are no longer the extreme intellectual rigor and high academic expectations of the training… but instead, financial suffering? To put it in plain English… Who in their right mind would do this when you know you are putting yourself, and potentially your family, in great financial peril?
My inner optimist tells me that there will always be a group of highly motivated people who will bear the difficulties, because the goal is lofty and righteous enough to keep their eyes on the prize. But what are we saying as a society when we make an education in healing so difficult to attain?
~Yousaf
March 14th, 2016
The Era of the Ill-Prepared Medical Student
Ahmad Yousaf, MD
Ahmad Yousaf, MD, is the 2015-16 Ambulatory Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School.
What is wrong with medical students nowadays? This question has been circulating in the academic medical world for years. As an intern and resident, I would hear complaints about how ‘unready’ they seemed. The grievances often include adjectives like ill-prepared, lazy, or uninterested. The complaints have burgeoned over time, and the examples are numerous in my institution: Students show up late to rounds with coffee in their hands; one med student had the gall to go directly to the attending and request early dismissal because he ‘had nothing to do.’ The problem seems to permeate all schools. Beyond the effects of this behavior on student culture, it results in underprepared interns and residents.
As a chief resident, I have set aside weekly teaching conferences with the students, and I think I have begun to better understand the issues. Just 5 to 10 years ago, medical school expectations were high. You were expected to show up early to rounds, leave late, be at the beck and call of your resident, and have absolute respect for an attending physician. Respect for the process of education was standard. You dressed appropriately. You studied to impress, and you came to rounds prepared to try your best. So why have these standards changed recently? Because none of these qualities are rewarded appropriately in a student’s medical school ‘report card.’
Medical student grades, and therefore class ranks, theoretically are based upon two major components: clinical evaluations and test scores (i.e., shelf exams). But the truth is, in medical education today, evaluations completed by residents and attendings of students on their medical teams are essentially useless. Most evals result in clinical grades that are essentially the same, no matter how hard-working or lazy a student was on the floors. Many reasons are put forward to explain why this occurs, but I think the most important is ‘evaluation burnout.’ Academic medicine is riddled with so many unneeded and redundant evaluations that most physicians do not put the time or mindshare into making them useful. This results in clinical scores that do not help discern who put forth the work to excel and who just showed up because they needed proof of attendance. It is for this reason that the test scores are weighted so much more heavily than clinical evaluations in the eyes of the average medical student.
“Why get to work early and learn about my patient when my test score and a review of ‘high yield’ facts from a review book will further my career more effectively than learning how to do a good physical exam?” “What is the point of having a well-prepared presentation for rounds when I will get the same score as my colleague who spent the morning going through review questions?” “What is the point of impressing my attendings when all that really matters is my grade and class rank?”
These questions guide the behavior of students, and I cannot blame them. Medical school is competitive. Long-term career plans depend on more than whether a resident team thinks a student is not putting quality time in on the wards. The finger must be pointed at our medical education system, which values test taking over clinical knowledge and skill. How can we expect to produce a generation of quality practitioners without ensuring that we instill the value of actually practicing that theoretical medicine they learn in textbooks and are quizzed on in exams? We somehow have to shift the tide of education toward, or perhaps back toward, an environment in which becoming a physician means more than a number or letter grade or a class rank.
Do you agree that students are ill-prepared? Do you see a solution to the problem of students being less interested in the work on the wards?
~Yousaf
February 26th, 2016
Caring For Today’s Veterans
Briana Buckner, MD
Briana Buckner, MD, is a 2015-16 Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
For most of residency, I missed the opportunity to care for veterans — mainly for selfish reasons, including my unwillingness to learn a new EMR and hospital. Once I became a chief resident, I realized that I would be spending 4 months at our local VA hospital. When I first came to the VA as a chief, my goals were similar to that at any other site at which I work: Get to know the staff, present quality conferences, and look after the residents. Little did I know that the VA would open my eyes to the special concerns of the millions of Americans who have served in the military.
On my first day, I was incredibly touched by how different it was to walk in the hallways at the VA, compared with my other sites. A casual trip to the cafeteria was showered with “Good morning, Doc. How you doing, Doc? Have a great day, Doc” and any other respectful salutation that you could think of. It initially seemed to be casual conversation, but I soon realized it was a sign of the culture. A military culture of respect that was palpable even in the hallways or cafeteria!
As I continued to adapt to my environment, I learned that this patient population had unexpected subtle differences from my other patients. There was a spirit of stoicism that often led me to underestimate how much pain a veteran was really in, and often left me surprised when I would check the medicine administration record to see my patient with an impressive wound had not requested any pain medication. Then there was communication of treatment plans — the veterans, as a whole, did not like uncertainty. I often found patients telling my team, “Doc, I don’t want to be no guinea pig. You know what you’re doing, right?”
I often stopped in my tracks and felt a gut check when a veteran opened up to me about seeing the death of a friend, being away from home for years, or having nightmares from their time in the military that often was many decades ago. I was most humbled by the patients who were the same age as I. The young man or woman who, if I saw him or her in the mall, I would never know the depths of the service they had given. Today’s veterans have new faces that I wasn’t prepared for. They are not just the faces of my Great Uncle and Grandfather (both veterans), they look like friends I went to college with.
There are more than 2.6 million service members that have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 (Ann Intern Med 2013; 159:ITC1), and many of these Americans have returned to civilian life after serving their country. This generation of veterans are jumping back into the civilian workforce and seeking care from civilian healthcare providers. The medical needs of this population are specific and include monitoring for post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, depression, and long-term sequela of traumatic brain injury. Without my time working at the Veterans’ hospital I might never have learned how to appropriately care for this population. I truly feel a tremendously deep appreciation for the sacrifices that these patients have made. Many of them are homeless and have yet to recover from what they encountered while in the military.
Today’s veterans are a heterogeneous group who deserve physicians who will adapt to their needs and see them in respectful light. I encourage all young medical students and residents to see their time in Veterans Affairs hospitals as a unique opportunity to learn, connect, and truly see this special population through an honest lens. My own lens is forever changed, and I hope to say, “thank you for your service,” a little more often than just on Veterans’ Day.
2021-2022 Chief Resident Panel
Abdullah Al-abcha, MD
Mikita Arora, MD
Madiha Khan, DO
Khalid A. Shalaby, MBBCh
Brandon Temte, DO
Resident chiefs in hospital, internal, and family medicine
Learn more about Insights on Residency Training.
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