Amsa Ad Lib

Can you recall a childhood memory when you learned something the hard way? Isaiah Cochran is getting ready to begin his second year of med school at the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, and as he reflects on his upbringing, he shares a story with us of a harsh childhood lesson his mother taught on Christmas morning. See how it has shaped his values and outlook, not only in everyday life but also in training and as a future physician.

You’ve completed an international elective or global health experience; so, what’s next? Explore how you can maximize the value of that experience and what next steps you should be taking upon your return with Dr. Joseph C. Kolars, Senior Associate Dean for Education and Global Initiatives at the University of Michigan Medical School.

It no longer seems impossible, or even unlikely: What happens if your medical center itself comes under attack? Have you thought about your role? What would you do? What should you do? Would you have time in the moment itself to weigh ethical considerations, personal safety and protocol? Probably not. In this episode, we get an inside look at a training exercise preparing health care providers for an attack on their own institution, and learn about the bioethics of just such a situation.

Do you have a plan to stay in control of your specialty choice, or is debt going to drive your career? No matter what values a student brings with them to medical school, the cost of their training and the weight of their student loans puts a lot of pressure on their specialty choice. Some may even avoid medicine as a career choice because of the costs. But for those who are really committed to primary care and community-oriented medicine, there are options. The National Health Service Corps is one of those options. In addition to awarding scholarships and loan repayment in exchange for commitments to serve in designated underserved areas after residency, the National Health Service Corps’ Students-to-Service program takes applicants in their final year of medical school for up to $120,000 in loan repayment in exchange for three years of service. With the application process for the Students-to-Service program opening in mid-August, we bring you a conversation with Dr. Luis Padilla, director of the National H

Do you think your MCAT test day went wrong? Like many of her peers studying for the MCAT, Megan Single spent hundreds of hours over the course of several months preparing for the exam. She woke up on the day of her exam and arrived ready to take on the MCAT head first; however, she couldn’t have anticipated that she was about to walk in on a nightmare. Hear Megan's story of her beeping MCAT, how she overcame defeat--from technological difficulties to illness--and how her experience added a unique perspective to her med school journey today.

Is it possible to maintain a creative life outside of medical training? Is it worth it? When M.D./Ph.D. student Lee Hong found herself drifting away from her poetry amid the grind of training, rather than give in, she wrote a poem about the challenge itself. Here, she reads from and discusses her work and the value it has brought to her in medicine.

Did you spend thousands of dollars on test prep when preparing for medical school? When you prepare for the MCAT exam for entrance to medical school, there's a different standard set from the very beginning. Some students dish out thousands preparing for the exam; but others can't afford such expenses and find themselves without access to test prep materials at all, or possibly buying older materials which leads to outdated studying in comparison to their peers. Hear more from Joey Johnson on admissions barriers and biases.

Even as the definition of a “nontraditional” med student has shifted, there are outliers. Elaine Luther is one such outlier. But medical school isn't just about the medical career that follows. It is itself an accomplishment—and a statement. Here's Elaine's story about what stood in her way, and the night that refocused her on a dream she'd been denied.

One of the frustrations of medical school is the distance between the student experience and direct patient care. Medical student involvement in care and care research doesn’t have to be strictly clinical. There are many areas outside the clinical realm that affect the patient experience, and offer an opportunity for medical students to become involved in meaningful care and research. Med student Ramona Mittal found herself working to gather information on a deeply personal practice at many hospitals: the collection, preservation and presentation of mementos from children at the end of life. She has been working to better understand how and why different medical centers manage this delicate but powerful task.

Does the competitive nature of medical school and medical students hold you back? Is there a way to use it to your advantage? Medical training, it seems, begins and ends with competition. All the way from applying to med school to applying to residency, medical students are seemingly pitted against one another. But how can that competitive spirit be tapped for learning in a healthy way? There are a number of people working on this now, generally using games for learning. Earlier this year, we spoke with a group of medical students who were investigating the use of competitive simulation at their own institution.

Biases in medical training are affecting medical students, but many--including you--may not appreciate that it’s happening. Fixing the problem won’t be easy, but some trainees themselves are working to address pervasive bias in medicine from the ground up. For the students trying to intervene, the first step in addressing bias in medical training is getting everyone to recognize how deeply--and sometimes subtly--ingrained it can be. Medical students Tehreem Rehman and Jes Minor started the Systemic Disease project. Among other goals, the project aims to gather stories from those exposed to or victimized by bias in medicine to start a conversation and increase awareness. To learn more about the Systemic Disease project, visit their website at http://www.systemicdisease.com or follow @systemicdisease on Twitter. You can also find Tehreem (@tehreemrehman) and Jes (@jes_minor) on Twitter as well.

Does being out of your context mean being out of your depth? The school year has come to a close, and for many future physicians, with summer comes an abroad experience. On AMSA ad lib, we’ve heard about picking a responsible study abroad program. But what happens when you are already in the middle of your experience and you find yourself in a tight spot, ethically? Or--maybe more likely--you aren’t sure about what you are seeing. Sometimes, even when you don’t realize it, these questions may spring from your own inexperience. Differences in populations and resources make a big difference in how medicine is practiced outside the United States, and if you have an open mind, that’s the whole point of having a training experience outside your normal context.

Have you given thought to how your life experiences outside medicine will improve your skills as a physician? Coming from a family of physicians, Vidya Viswanathan felt like she needed to cut her own path--one leading in a totally different direction. Her journey took her far afield from health care. Here’s her story of how she found her way back--and how she’s served by everything she learned along the way. Vidya’s story, titled "What do you think I should do," was part of a series of Story Slams presented at AMSA’s 2016 Annual Convention.

These days, we're always looking for an easy fix. Come on, isn't there an app to fix our team? Not exactly. But of course there are ways to use software to help you implement healthy team dynamics, such as transparent goals, and team member accountability. You don't even need anything fancy like the big project planning suites.

Are team members in your small group lifting each other up, or holding each other back? So much of medical training is individual study, but medicine has a growing appreciation for teamwork in health care, and that may reflected at your medical school. Some schools do more group work than others, but you may find yourself on a small group project or even in an informal study group where team dynamics are holding everyone back. What's your role in keeping the group together and on track? What can you do if things start to fall apart?

Even after you’ve left medical school, you’ll have to stay current. There’s a lot more to it than just picking up CME credits; though staying up to date on clinical medicine and pharmacology is critical, there are technologies and trends among patients and society that you’ll have to keep up with. Dr. Jim Slayton explains how he’s found that to be the case over the past 25 years since he graduated medical school and served as AMSA president. He also has some advice on how you, as a medical student, can help more experienced physicians stay up to date on these trends too.

If you don’t know the community you’ll be practicing in, you won’t be able to serve your patients as effectively as possible. So what is the link between community and clinical care, and why does it matter? Here to help us understand the link is Jay Bhatt, D.O. Dr. Bhatt is many things: Primary care physician, national health service corps scholar. He teaches med students, residents...and dancers.

For fourth-years, it all comes down to a single moment. The Match Day ceremonies that will cap off this week at campuses across the country are the end of a long journey for fourth-year medical students. Along the way, they made some huge decisions about themselves and their careers. On Friday, they'll get their envelopes. Here's what that's like.

Learn how to be a effective leader. We've all heard that leaders aren't born, they are made. But who "makes" them, and how? In this episode, Drs. Deborah Hall and Suzanne Rose explore the importance of medical leadership, starting in medical school, and how med students can improve their leadership skills.

As a medical student, you can have real power when it comes to shaping policy and political opinion. But first, you have to seize it. No matter whether you'd like to advocate on behalf of patients, against student debt or for any number of important topics, elected officials will listen to you. Dr. Alison Case is here to help you get started. Dr. Case would like to extend special thanks to Professor Mary Beth Levin, Dr. Pratima Gupta, and Max Feinstein for their contribution to this episode and more generally their guidance and great advocacy work. Music is this episode includes "Super Bubbly" by Jesse Spillane, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can find more of his work at http://www.jessespillane.com.