Island Med Student

There’s a part of me that doesn’t even believe that I am now only three weeks away from the end of my first year of medical school. I can hardly fathom the monstrous amount of material that I’ve managed to cram into my poor little brain in the past eight months. Actually, I sometimes don’t even feel like I really know anything. It wasn’t until I was accidentally watching an episode of House the other night and they mentioned a disease where your body has excess amounts of copper and it gets deposited in your eyes, and I shouted out “Wilson’s Disease!” that I realized that I might actually be learning a thing or two in med school.

I think the nagging feeling that I don’t know much about being a doctor is related to the fact that all I really know is stuff related to the basic sciences, and I don’t know much about actually being a doctor. Sure, I can tell you which pharyngeal arch becomes what; I can recite to you the pathway of carbohydrate metabolism; I can identify any nerve in the human body; and I can calculate your minute ventilation; but what do I really know about treating patients? Not a whole heck of a lot. Herein lies the agony of learning the basic sciences.

I understand that histology, anatomy, biochemistry and other subjects are the foundation of understanding the human body, and hence being a capable physician. But the clinical applications of all this stuff just seem so far away. Luckily, I will be starting the “introduction to clinical medicine” course next semester, so I will finally be learning the real meat and potatoes of being a doctor. Also, I will be making trips to the local hospital and actually seeing (and touching, gasp!) actual living patients, so I’ll finally be able to put some of the stuff I’ve learned into context.

But all of this just seems so far away. To me, this first year of med school has been really challenging at times. It’s not the material, per se, but just the lack of clinical context. Yes, I want to be a doctor, and yes I have to learn all of this material to even begin to understand how to treat patients, but it’s been difficult at times reminding myself that all this has a purpose. When I made the decision to become a doctor, I knew that I would have to learn the basics before getting into the clinical aspects, but I didn’t realize how much I would miss the clinical side. I long for the days when I was working in the hospital, seeing patients every day. That’s what kept me motivated. That’s what gave me the drive to pursue medicine.

I know that some med schools recognize how important it is to begin immersing students in the clinical stuff right away, and I hope that more schools continue moving in this direction. I can imagine that some people get so bogged down in the basic sciences in their first two years, that they lose sight of why they wanted to pursue medicine in the first place and end up giving up. I’m very glad that I didn’t give up. But if I don’t get some clinical action soon, I’m scared that I’ll lose sight of why I so passionately want to become a doctor.

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