Any tips or advice for incoming medical students? Words from the wise!

I start at WVSOM this August....I'm interested in tips and advice also!

Stay humble!!! Even when you become a physician. We need everybody! Nurses, P.A.s, patients, etc..are NOT beneath you..they just chose a different path in life!!

Don't try to do it alone. Get a good study group that you can discuss things with, vent with, and celebrate with when it's over. No one ever truly understands like fellow classmates.

1. Get a First Aid for Step One right away and/or BRS review books and use them AS you take each class as supplement, and it will make step one prep easier.

2. Don't stay up late cramming the night before a test, especially if you aren't near age 21 anymore.

3. If you dissect cadavers at your school, use separate clothing, even bras, shoes and socks, and if you take them home, seal them TIGHTLY in a garbage bag in your trunk. Take industrial strength soaps and lotions to school. You're going to stink and you need all the help you can get.

4. If you are not a group study type of person, find ONE person who is at least as smart as you. Get together with that person a couple of days before an exam and quiz each other.

5. Consider a non-traditional study schedule if you have a family. It's okay to only study a couple of hours a day during the week, and then study continuously on the weekend if that's what works for your family.

6. Have at least a couple of students as friends so you can vent occasionally, in order to minimize the stress you bring home.

7. Find one small thing you like to do each day, and don't give it up, no matter how wacky your schedule is. If you like to work out, do it. If you get pleasure from sipping coffee and reading the paper at Starbucks every morning, do it.

8. Remember that if you made it into medical school, you are smart enough and organized enough to get through medical school. The key is perseverence and perspective. You are doing this because you want to do it, not because you have to do it. The school did NOT make a mistake, you are NOT an imposter, and you DO belong there. Don't let any exam, gunner, skeptic or your own fear tell you otherwise.

Thanks Laura! I will do what you said and it makes total sense.

Keep them coming. I'm going to put this in an article.

More please!!

Good list Laura!

I'll add:
Do get involved. Get to know people. Pick one or two organizations and work your way up the ranks. Remember, you had to be "well rounded" to get into med school - keep it up, as residencies look for it too.

Don't kill yourself over a bad test score. Especially if it's the first one of first year. We all bomb one occasionally.

Faculty are your friends. Get to know them, and ask for help if you need it.

Medical school is not all study, study, study. You really can have a life and do well. It won't seem like it at first, but you adapt - just like you did in college.

Don't ever badmouth anyone. Hospitals are small communities, and it will likely get back to that person. They might care, they might not, but they also might be grading you.

That said, have some close friends you can vent to. Support groups are essential. You will lose contact of many of your friends when you hit your clinical years, and the better you cement them early, the better support network you'll have.

Love thy nurses. They will save your rear if you treat them with respect. Treat them poorly, and you're doomed. They tend to know what's going on, and can clue you in to important things about your patients - things that your resident won't have time to learn before rounds.

Be enthusiastic, even if you hate what you're doing. You worked your tail off to get here, you might as well try to learn from whatever you're doing.

Keep a running list of all your activities, awards, etc. It will make future scholarship applications and ERAS a lot easier.

If you are inclined, poke around about research. Often there are big ongoing projects that a medical student can worm her way into - projects that don't take much time on your part, give you an idea of what research is all about, build good connections to faculty (read: letters of recommendation), and might even get you published.

Be assertive on the wards. If an opportunity comes up to do something, jump on it. It may be your only chance to do that "practice" LP before you're an intern. This may mean repeated reminders to your seniors that "I'd really like to do X." Be persistent. It doesn't hurt to have read over the procedure beforehand, but usually the resident will walk you through it.

Ask questions. Ask lots. If you don't know, ask. Be an active learner - most docs love to be asked to explain things. You don't have to silently think that you'll just look it up when you get home. Besides, you can ask questions as a medical student without fear of reprisal. It's harder to do that as a resident, when you're supposed to know more.

Accept that this training is sometimes completely overwhelming. Sometimes just realizing that you aren't the problem is a solution

And that's what springs to mind at the moment.
Danielle

Oh, one more. The following tidbit came from one of my surgery attendings. I love this philosophy...

Always answer questions assertively. If you don't know the answer, guess, but guess assertively. You can never be more wrong, but you can always be less right. It's better to confidently say "the pyloric sphincter!" than "um, the uh, pyloric sphincter??" And if you have no clue, you can always guess something completely off the wall and usually get a laugh out of it. They generally won't fault you for being wrong.

You will never know it all. Might as well be confident about what you do know, even if you're not positively sure it's right.

I'm going to second and third the advise on asking questions and speaking up. I'm a hospitalist in a teaching hospital. The students who stand in the corner and watch lose out on a lot of learning, bec. I know that there is no way that they understand everything that is going on (even I don't always follow right away--just today an intern's off service note really helped me put a patient's whole picture into perspective). I love having a student who follows me into a room, gives me a rundown on what's been going on with a patient and asks questions about the patient's care. I even like the questions not directly related to the patient's problem--like on social issues, or developmental issues. I had one student a few weeks ago who so impressed me on the 2 occasions that I interacted with her that I offered to speak to the program director if she's interested in joining our program. As a student I was one of the quiet ones--and now I realize how much I missed.

I'm not much of a "pimper", but I have to disagree on the advise to guess if you don't know the answer. Maybe its different in other specialties, but in peds I need to trust my residents. One of the most important aspects of trust is honesty. I'd much rather hear from a student "I don't know--but I'd like to learn" than an answer that is obviously a guess--even a right answer! If the student is willing to guess at the answer to a question out of fear of not looking good, what will happen when they are a resident in a difficult situation at 3am and are concerned about looking good? I want to know that that resident will call me for advise, not guess and possibly harm the patient.

Other advise for the clinical years--

write as many notes as possible and get them reviewed by residents/attending. writing things in an organised matter will really help you to understand all the different problems that your patients have.

Take any extra time you have to talk to your patients. Don't be afraid to ask them how it feels to be in their position. You can learn a lot about how to relate to and speak to your patients just from trying to see things from their perspective.

Also ask your patients to tell you what they understand of their illness and treatment. It will be a real eye opener into communication/lack of communication and just misunderstanding that goes on between doctors and their patients.