エピソード

  • 17-Embryology?!?!

    17-Embryology?!?!
    2023/03/04

    Welcome to the I want to be a doctor podcast where insider information about what it takes to become a physician is available for anyone. I'm Dr. Robin Dickinson, a board-certified family physician and I will give honest answers to your questions. Today's question is from a first year medical student who asks "I'm so confused with embryology. What do I do?"


    As someone who is still confused with embryology, let me tell you, you are not alone. I don't know any practicing physicians who are really clear on embryology unless they did research in the field before medical school. It's a really confusing subject.


    It helps to remember WHY you're learning embryology. It's so you can understand differences like cleft lips, limb differences, and VACTERL. So for each section, if your book doesn't already have a clinical correlation, just Google it. Then go to YouTube and search for that diagnosis, maybe with the words Children's Hospital. So you might search "Children's Hospital Cleft Lip". Then you'll have lots of patient stories to choose from. If surgery is a treatment option, try to include one that says something about the surgery. They are usually less than five minutes each so you could even watch a couple. Now that you have those patients in mind, study embryology to understand the patient and the treatment.


    Next, learn how you learn best. Basically everyone learns best if they learn using multiple modalities. Watch animations online, create your own drawings, listen to explanations. I finally understand embryology the best I ever have because I created models from polymer clay to use while teaching. You can get a huge amount of clay for $20 on Amazon.


    And teach! Teaching someone else embryology helps you understand information in a whole new way because you have to simplify it to something that makes sense for people with no medical background. If you can simplify it, you'll understand it better and create a framework for learning the complexity of the whole thing. If you don't have a willing human, teach your cat, dog, or iguana. Or create a Youtube video or podcast. I used to make an audio recording of summaries of everything I needed to know so I could listen to it while I was commuting to and from school.


    Episode 7 also had more tips on how to study.


    That's it for today. Subscribe, share with your friends and mentors; and remember to live the life that is right for you with your personality interests and values.

    Please send your questions to me at podcast@docrobinschool.com. That's podcast at d-o-c Robin like the bird school dot com.

    Show notes are available on the podcast website linked below.

    This episode was sponsored by Dr. Robin's School, the first premedical curriculum for kids, and recorded and produced in beautiful, downtown Englewood, Colorado.


    https://podcasts.bcast.fm/i-want-to-be-a-doctor
    続きを読む 一部表示
    3 分
  • 14-What Training for Whom?

    14-What Training for Whom?
    2023/02/11
    Welcome to the I want to be a doctor podcast where insider information about what it takes to become a physician is available for anyone. I'm Dr. Robin Dickinson, a board-certified family physician and I will give honest answers to your questions. Today's question is from an 8th grader who asks what is the difference between a doctor, a nurse practitioner, a nurse, and a physician’s assistant?You are not the only person who wonders that! It can be very confusing understanding all the different roles in caring for a patient.The two main differences are the training and what the person is able to do. I’m going to answer the questions for the United States. There are differences around the world. For example, I earned a 4 year bachelor’s degree in history and biology before starting my 4 years in medical school and then going on to residency. In Japan, students go into medical school directly instead of first doing college or university but it’s 6 years of medical school before going into residency. So here is what the training and responsibilities of each of these professions are in the United States.A physician in the U.S. after graduating from high school first goes to college or university and earns a bachelor’s degree. That can be a bachelor of arts (which is what I did) or a bachelor of science. I chose bachelor of arts because I double majored in history and biology and minored in chemistry so it made more sense. I would have had to take more math classes and do a few other requirements for a bachelor of science but by the time I’d finished all my classes for both majors and the minor and also did various other classes that are required to get into medical school (for example, so much physics that I would have only needed 2 more classes to get a minor in it), I just wanted to have fun. So instead of getting a bachelor’s of science, I took classes like Old English, costume design, and other fun topics that I knew I would be setting aside when I started medical school.During college, it’s important to also be preparing to get into medical school. This involves finding volunteer opportunities, ways to show that you’re a leader, things like that, and also preparing for the MCAT. The MCAT is the medical college admissions test. It’s a one-time exam that gives you a score that is used to rank you against other people applying for medical school. Some medical schools care deeply about the MCAT and others don’t. There’s a lot more that goes into it. The personal statement is extremely important to nearly every medical school. That is an essay you write that lets them get to know you as a person. It’s not a list of accomplishments--the rest of your application includes that--it’s a way of showing them who you are beyond all that.Then there’s four years of medical school. The first two years are classroom. These can be lectures, discussion, lab, and so forth. The second two years are clinical rotations. During the 3rd year of medical school (the first year of clinical rotations), everyone does pretty much the same rotations. It’s foundational knowledge. The 4th and last year of medical school, everyone does different rotations depending on what specialty you want to go into and you apply for residency. You also have to pass the first two steps of the USMLE (the United States Medical Licensing Exam) for MD students or the first two levels of the COMLEX (Comprehensive Osteopathic Medical Licensing Exam) for DO students. The 3rd step or level is usually done during internship, the first year of residency.When you graduate from medical school, you are a physician. People call you doctor because you are. But you don’t have a ton of experience so you do a residency. A hundred years ago, people didn’t need to do residencies. They just went to work as a physician. But there was a lot less to learn. We have so many medications, vaccines, lab tests, imaging modalities. The first antibiotic was discovered less than 100 years ago. The first xrays were done about 120 years ago. So doctors back then didn’t have nearly so much to learn. Now there is so much that we have to focus on just one chunk of the information. That’s where specialities come from--it takes years to learn what you need to know in just one realm of the human body.Residency is different lengths depending on what kind of specialist you become. Internship is the first year of residency. That’s also called PGY1 which stands for post graduate year 1. There’s PGY2, 3, however many it takes. Neurosurgery is 7 years. Which makes sense--they are doing very delicate work doing surgery on the brain and spinal cord and we want them to have lots and lots of training. After residency, some physicians do a fellowship. This is another year or two of more focused, detailed training. For example, after doing the 4 years of college, 4 years ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    11 分
  • 13-Being Human

    13-Being Human
    2023/02/04
    Welcome to the I want to be a doctor podcast where insider information about what it takes to become a physician is available for anyone. I'm Dr. Robin Dickinson, a board-certified family physician and I will give honest answers to your questions.Today's question is from a number of you who asked, “Where have you been the last couple weeks? Why haven’t any new episodes dropped?” So today I’m going to talk about something that most physicians and aspiring physicians struggle with. Being human.So to answer the easy part of this. Where I’ve been the last two weeks was recovering from a concussion and then covid. The concussion happened at home when I smashed my head into a door frame. No violence involved, just my own poor balance and vertigo since my strokes almost a decade ago. The covid was super annoying because I’m vaccinated and very careful, always wearing a mask in public and so forth. But it turns out that both vaccination and masks work. I was only actually sick for about a day and never had any breathing problems despite the fact I have severe asthma. And even though the three days before my positive covid test were quite busy with kids’ activities, church activities, and so forth, not a single one of my contacts has tested positive. So I’m overall relieved to discover from personal experience that vaccination and masks actually work.I’m also realizing that I wasn’t taking care of myself AT ALL after my concussion and wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for the covid test. I really desperately needed to give my brain some time to recover and was struggling to get through, but I was still trying to push my poor concussed brain to do ALL THE THINGS. So today I want to take a moment and talk about being human.In many ways, physicians are expected to do and be in ways that are outside the usual human experience. If I told you to let some random person at the park give you medication to make you both unconscious and paralyzed and then cut you open--well, you would tell me that I was nuts. Of course you don’t let random people do that. And if you went back not that many years in human history, anyone attempting to do that would have been considered dangerous or crazy or something. But we expect doctors to do that without thinking that they are horrible people because of it.We are expected to be able to deliver terrible, life changing news in one appointment and then show patience and empathy about someone’s head cold in the next appointment.Our training involves pushing our bodies to their physical limits, and then making life or death decisions, performing procedures with sharp instruments, or simply being caring and wonderful humans while 30 hours into a shift without any sleep and inadequate breaks for food or toileting.Being ill or unavailable for our patients is often considered not just inconvenient, but morally wrong. There were actually patients who were mad at me for being on bedrest for a short time when I was pregnant with my daughter. How dare I not be available for their appointments? And there are ongoing discussions about whether a medical degree is wasted on physicians who choose to work part time or pursue a non-clinical career. Are we breaking some sort of moral obligation to serve?And so when our human bodies break down, we’ve been trained to keep going. I cannot tell you how many doctors I’ve seen working with significant physical or emotional problems that really warranted some medical leave. I personally started seeing patients again a week after my strokes. Because I’d already rescheduled their appointments while I was in the hospital and didn’t want to have to make them wait even longer. And I taught classes all afternoon immediately after my concussion, smiling and laughing with my students and forgetting the significant pain in my head. Because most physicians have discovered that we can completely ignore our bodies if we’re focused on our patients or students. I worked while in labor with my son and have cared for patients while suffering what was an unbearable migraine or incredibly difficult emotional pain. But as soon as I’m focused on my work, that all disappears. Some physicians take it so far that they use their work like a drug to numb their feelings, their physical suffering, their relationship problems, and so forth. In order to become a physician, most people learn to deprive themselves. While other people are out having fun, you’re studying or volunteering or doing research. You stay up late preparing for an exam or finishing a paper. And then once in medical school, the amount of information is literally impossible for a human being to learn...but you try to do it anyway. Residency develops not just your clinical abilities but pushes you further physically, mentally, and emotionally than you’ve ever been pushed before.And after all that. You’re still ...
    続きを読む 一部表示
    6 分