Common Situations You can Relate to as a Medical Student!
By: Yasindri Jayawardena
Long days, sleepless nights, and endless studying – that is medical school in a nutshell! Medical school demands so much of your time and attention that it doesn’t just feel like you’re doing a degree but feels more like you’re in a relationship. In a relationship with medicine, for better, for worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us apart.
Like in any relationship, medicine also starts making subtle changes in your life. Soon most medical students are diagnosed with having what I like to call “Med School Syndrome” – a set of symptoms that you would experience or encounter only if you’re a medical student.
Sleeping Sickness:
Due to the hectic schedule and demanding workload, most medical students frequently don’t get enough sleep. Suddenly, it’s not an unusual phenomenon to see medical students falling asleep at the very first chance they get. One of my med friends was so exhausted that she once fell asleep while taking the history from a patient. Imagine that!
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Seeing random diseases in people you meet:
As a medical student, you learn so much about various diseases. A side effect of this soon becomes that you start seeing these same conditions in various people you meet every day. I was once in the hospital cafeteria when I happened to see someone who I thought had jaundice (he had a yellow colored sclera). I excitedly pointed it out to my friend and while both of us were trying to get a better look, the person in question he noticed us looking at him – oops.
Immunity against sounds of moans, groans, and coughs.
In the ward, medical students constantly hear people groaning and coughing and they soon become immune to it – until it becomes just a sound in the background. In the context of the ward, this can be useful as these sounds and sights will not keep you from concentrating on your work, but when outside it may make you seem insensitive. Suppose you’re out with your friends and someone starts having a coughing fit and you seem unbothered because it is nothing out of the ordinary for you.
Getting excited by rare diseases:
Despite usually being bad for the patient, it’s common to get excited at the news of the admittance of a patient with a disease not commonly seen. Medical wards are filled with patients admitted for common things like fever, asthma, chronic kidney disease. Maybe a bit insensitive, but almost every medical student is guilty of getting excited when hearing that a patient has been admitted for a less commonly encountered condition such as Graves’ Disease or Myasthenia Gravis.
The fear of causing pain to patients:
Due to the fear of causing discomfort to the patient, most often medical students end up handling the patient too gently during an examination or too timidly during a procedure. I once had a patient who told me while I was observing his ear through the otoscope that I was being too gentle (and likely not seeing much) and suggested I insert the otoscope deeper into his ear without being frightened.
Likewise, drawing blood or inserting a cannula to a patient can be terrifying at first! Performing a procedure that you know is definitely going to cause pain can be really nerve-wracking for any medical student. It adds to the pressure of performing an already complicated procedure you might not be good at. It’s easy to get discouraged when you see a patient squirm in pain or a procedure is unsuccessful.
Never Sleeping in Again:
Waking up on a Saturday/holiday and not being able to sleep becomes common because you either have to go to the hospital or feel you should be studying. Most often medical students bid farewell to their weekends and holidays – the pattern of people falling ill is not governed by the fact that it’s not a regular workday, is it?
Despite all the holidays sacrificed, awkward and embarrassing situations, medical students usually enjoy the life that they have chosen for themselves! It’s amazing how on the first day of your clinical rotations you can barely hold a stethoscope, and by the end, you’re able to identify murmurs, differentiate breath sounds, and distinguish various other pathology.
It’s a love-hate kind of relationship, in medicine.
Yasindri Jayawardena is a 3rd Year Medical Student from Sri Lanka. She blogs about life, inspiration, poetry, med school, and everything nice at https://aspoonfulofdri.wordpress.com!
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Ahhh the old days of being a med student. I can relate to a lot of these things. Even after 16+ years of being a radiologist, I still get excited about seeing an unusual case, so that part never changes (as a patient it is never a good sign if the radiologist is showing your case off to colleagues, etc).
I’m afraid the sleep deprivation part is going to continue well into residency where I think I got even less sleep than as a med student.