the perils of

I was reading this article about building clinician empathy, and one of the suggestions it made was to offer debriefing sessions for students and residents whenever their patients die. I remember the first time I ever saw someone die. I was a clerk (a fourth-year med student) rotating in Internal Medicine at a public hospital. It had been a busy night in the ER. I'd spent most of the day on my feet doing random tasks: IV insertions, blood extractions, patient interviews. My feet were aching for some rest. Just when the workload was starting to slow, and the comforts of resting my butt on a monobloc chair resurfaced in my mind, someone's cardiac monitor alarmed. A series of fast, metallic, monotone beeps, barely audible over the usual ER noises. Beep beep beep beep beep.  Doctors rushed to him - a middle-aged man, morbidly obese, whose dark brown skin had an ashy undertone. He wasn't breathing. The resident who was leading the team was cool and collected. She spok

I'm going to start a segment on my blog called "Favorites," where I'll just list down all my favorite things at the moment. It's not exactly a new segment; I've been doing it since the beginning of this blog, but this will be the first time I'm ever giving it a name. So, for my Favorite #1, here's a little insight into my favorite rotation: Psychiatry . For quite some time, whenever I'd get asked what specialty I wanted to take up after graduating from med school, I'd answer nothing (i.e. no specialization, just a general practitioner; I didn't just silently stare at them for a full minute and say nothing). For context, to take up a "specialty" often means you have to go through 3 to 5 more years of rigorous training, in addition to the 5 years of medical school you've already taken up. Going into training is like being a hospital slave: You don't control your hours, you get paid next to nothing, and you have to d

Fourth day of my Psych rotation and I'm still psyched to be here Started the day with a delicious breakfast courtesy of the Psych department as well as an intriguing case presentation on a histrionic personality. I have ingested 2 cups of coffee, one of which was admixed with an entire pack of Milo The results of the March med boards came out today, and all 18 takers from ASMPH passed!!! CONGRATS!!! Updating this blog pretty regularly now To end this post, here is a random drawing I made:

Today's sudden outburst of unstructured writing is brought to you by The Princess Diaries rerun on Netflix. Sunday from-duty mornings when I have the condo all to myself = priceless Let me start by explaining that The Princess Diaries was one of my absolute FAVORITE movies back in grade school. Watching it now through the eyes of a 20-something-year-old, I see how much of the way I am today was affected by this movie, along with the original book series by Meg Cabot. If you're a fetus who doesn't understand what the movie is, or a male who previously dismissed this movie as another "chick film" and avowed to never ever see it, then I shall explain the premise. Mia Thermopolis is a super awkward, clumsy, frizzy-haired 16-year-old who suddenly learns that her father, whom she has been separated from her entire life, is actually the heir to the royal throne of the fictional European country of Genovia. The book series (and the first movie) centers on Mia&