Insights on Residency Training

April 8th, 2016

The Costs of Being a Doctor

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

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 […]

---

March 14th, 2016

The Era of the Ill-Prepared Medical Student

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

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 […]

---

February 26th, 2016

Caring For Today’s Veterans

Briana Buckner, MD

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 […]

---

February 12th, 2016

What Have I Learned as a Chief Resident?

Raktim Ghosh, MD

At my institution, next academic year’s chief residency application email was sent out last week. The APDIM spring meeting for chief residents and program administrator is going to be held in Las Vegas in April 2016. The 2016 chief residents need to be selected before that meeting. That e-mail brought a flashback memory for me. I met Charleen […]

---

February 5th, 2016

Don’t Give Up!

Gregory Shumer, MD

There comes a time in most people’s training when adversity threatens to become overwhelming and swallow them whole. It could be as a medical student, while spending countless hours in the library or when on demanding rotations. Or, it could be during residency, from the 80-hour work weeks or the stressful patient care situations. It […]

---

January 29th, 2016

Zaatari: Day 2 with Syrian Refugees

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

This is my second post about my trip to the Zaatari Refugee camp in Jordan with the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). I will continue to share my daily journal entries with you in hopes of educating the American medical and nonmedical communities about what I saw, erasing the irrational fears that have guided the discussion […]

---

January 22nd, 2016

Today’s Medical Care — A Trap for the Sick and Elderly ?

Andrew Ip, MD

One of the great things about serving as chief resident this year is the opportunity to attend wards.  Below is a short story about a patient that was admitted to my team for less than 1 hour, but whose impact on me will last the rest of my career: In November, I had the privilege to […]

---

January 15th, 2016

Zaatari: Day 0–1

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

“I am going to a Syrian refugee camp.” The words came out of my mouth without hesitation, and my wife’s reaction is exactly what I expected… She already knew. After 5 years of marriage and 8 years of being stuck with me, she knew how I was going to react when I saw the medical mission […]

---

December 29th, 2015

Holiday Reflection

Briana Buckner, MD

Once a year, we have this very exciting period of time filled with holiday fun. The holidays bring families together, children get excited for Santa Claus, and the parking lots of malls make you think really hard about every gift you are seeking to buy. Despite all this excitement, the holidays can mean something a tad […]

---

December 18th, 2015

Morbidity and Mortality

Ahmad Yousaf, MD

He nervously shifted in his position in front of the audience of his peers. His voice was a little shaky, and the few words trying to escape his lips were chewed and swallowed. He was narrating a case in which a colleague’s sense of urgency, or rather, her lack thereof, likely negatively affected his patient. She […]

---