Island Med Student

You’re sitting in the examining room, anxiously awaiting your doctor, wondering if she’ll be able to provide some relief to what ails you. Then she walks through the door. She’s not wearing a white coat, but instead is casually dressed and her hair is cut into a bright pink mohawk. Your jaw drops to the floor in disbelief. Certainly she’s not the doctor — maybe she’s a tech or a nurse. But then she introduces herself. “Hello, I’m Dr. Kendra Campbell, how can I help you today?” How would you react? Would you be astonished? Would you be angry or upset? Would you refuse to be seen by such a doctor? Or would you give her a chance?

According to a study recently published in the British Medical Journal, your reaction probably depends on your age and on whether or not the doctor was smiling. The authors of this study showed patients pictures of doctors in various styles of dress, ranging from the very formal white coat to informal jeans and short skirts. They also showed pictures of doctors with less conservative appearances, such as women with brightly colored hair and men with earrings. What I found interesting was that the patient’s age seemed to have an important correlation with what they found acceptable in a doctor. Older patients were much less accepting of less conservative attire, whereas younger patients seemed to prefer the less formal and less conservative dress.

As someone with brightly colored hair, this is obviously fascinating to me. I’ve managed to get away with it thus far in my career, working at various hospitals and at the AAMC (and I can tell you that I was the only one with such at hair at every place I’ve worked). But what happens when I start my clinical rotations or my residency, and when I’m finally in practice? Surely, people will expect me to conform to some standards.

Up to now, I’ve received mixed responses to my hair, but by far, most of them have been positive. The initial reaction seems to be shock, and then maybe a bit of suspicion. Can a girl with a pink mohawk be a good doctor? Is she a delinquent? Maybe a democrat? But after a few minutes of talking with me, most people seem to forget about the color of my hair and instead focus on who I am. I think that I’m a pretty nice person, and most people seem to agree. I certainly hope to be an outstanding doctor someday. More than one person has told me that they were taken back by my hair at first, but then pleasantly surprised after getting to know me. I’ve even been encouraged by more than one very conservative person to “keep the hair.” It is definitely a part of who I am.

The other really fascinating finding of the BMJ study is that no matter what the doctor was wearing, if they were smiling, most patients found this very appealing. This opens up a whole new can of worms. Any psychologist, or person for that matter, can tell you that a smile can go a long way. Perhaps this is how I’ve gotten away with my crazy hair for so long. I am a smile-a-holic. I am one of those annoying people who seem to be smiling all day long. Goofy smiles, toothy smiles, sushi hanging out of my mouth smiles, you name it — I’m probably sporting it. Maybe that’s been my saving grace. But I wonder if the person who interviews me for a residency position will feel the same way if I show up for my interview with a pink mohawk and a huge smile. I’d love to hear what you think.

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Take this Sex Test from the BBC. It’s really fun, I promise. Turns out that I’m half male half female. Fancy that.

My recent hair change for the new year was so successful that I decided to give my website a facelift as well. Welcome to Island Med Student 2.0. Since I first released my site last August, I knew that I would eventually be making a huge upgrade. I’ve migrated from Moveable Type to WordPress, which is a much more user-friendly application (if you ask me…which you didn’t.) Hopefully, you’ll find this new site to be prettier, easier to navigate, and more informative. I still have a lot more content that I plan on adding in the next few weeks such as the long-awaited pics of the Ross University campus and some more links to kewl med school course related stuff. Also, I plan on writing a little Med School Survival Guide, which I’m hoping will be useful to some of you out there.

I want to give a huge shoutout to Micah, Circus Boy and Katie, who all contributed manual labor/putting up with me working on this project. I couldn’t have done it without you guyz and galz. I’m really excited about the new year, and all that awaits us. I know that I’ll be working my toosh off, but as with most things in life, a little bit of elbow grease goes a long way.

Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter Mary recently announced that she’s having a baby with her partner. Many conservatives are very concerned about how these two people who are living in sin will end up harming their poor child. An article that just appeared in Slate Magazine really hit the nail on the head with its comparison of the search for evidence that gay parents are destructive with the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I mean, aren’t lesbian parents just as destructive as WMDs? How could having two loving mothers ever be good for a child? You can look at examples such as Micheal Jackson’s loving heterosexual parents, or perhaps Charles Manson’s supportive parents, (Manson had an alcoholic prostitute mother who allegedly sold Charlie for a pitcher of beer) to see that it takes both a man and a woman to raise children. Having two loving fathers or mothers is simply not enough. Even though the American Psychological Association has compiled abstracts of 67 studies, which all seem to find that gay parents are just as effective, and even potentially more so than heterosexual parents, they must have been poorly designed studies. Gay people are inherently evil, and there is no way they could ever love a child as fully as holy heterosexuals. I’m sure that the proof that gay and lesbian couples make horrible parents is out there somewhere waiting to be discovered, just like the WMDs.

NY Times just posted an article, about this year in health fads. Here is the summary:

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I’m heading into my second semester of medical school. Overall, the experience has been excellent so far, but I have noticed some strange things about med school. Mostly, it has forced me to re-examine my learning style. I couldn’t use any of the same techniques, which I had perfected for undergrad. Note cards don’t work anymore because you don’t even have the time to make all the ones you’d need. The thing that saddened me the most about medical school is that you don’t have time to read all of the textbooks. In undergrad, I would read the assigned material, AND usually the rest of the book as well. I’ve always been a bit of a reading maniac. I read at a faster-than-most-people pace and reading has always been a passion of mine. But I quickly learned that in med school, you have to make many sacrifices due to lack of time. One of the sacrifices that I had to make was to nix reading all of the books. I simply didn’t have the time.
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Merry Christmas everyone! I must admit that I am not terribly in the Christmas spirit today. In fact, the only proof that I have that it’s Christmas is the date on my wall calendar. It doesn’t feel like Christmas here. I don’t see any signs of Christmas. I don’t smell any Christmas food. If I was a synesthete, I might say that seeing a Christmas tree makes me smell eggnog, or that when I eat fruitcake, I hear the song Jingle Bells. An article that just appeared in Seed Magazine discussed this very phenomenon. It turns out that around one to four percent of people suffer from a form of synesthesia, which is a neurological mixing of various sensory inputs in their brain. The picture above was drawn by Marcia Smilack, an artist and synesthete who uses her synesthesia to create many forms of art.
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As promised, here is the required and recommended book list for first and second semester Ross University students, with my feedback.  Please remember, these are merely MY opinions.  You may find out that you are the type of person who never even cracks open a textbook, or you might want to have them all.  Also, keep in mind that most of the books are available to use at the library.  But if you’re like me, and you don’t study in the library, then it might be really inconvenient for you to try to use theirs.  As far as buying the books through the bookstore, it’s the easiest, but most expensive route. It’s convenient, because they ship them to campus, and have them waiting for you when you get here, but you can find the books online for much cheaper, if you’re willing to shop around, and have them shipped to campus. You can also just wait until you get here and try to find someone who is selling them, but this is much riskier because you might not be able to find all the books you need. If you decide to buy them online, please do use these links as I will get a small portion of the sales! Anyhoo, here is my 8 cents worth:
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I just came across this letter on a fellow blogger, Dr. Charles’s site. It made me all gooey inside. This one goes out to everybody out there who needs something to believe in.

This letter to the editor appeared 109 years ago:
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Christmas day is rapidly approaching. This will be my very first Christmas spent outside of the United States. I must admit that I am not a very religious person. To me, Christmas is more about spending time with my family. I truly hate how commercial Christmas has become. I’d rather eat a bowl of rusty nails and broken glass than visit a shopping mall around this time of the year. Luckily, I don’t have to deal with any of that here in Dominica. The only signs of Christmas here are some few and far between Christmas lights hung up on houses, and a miniature plastic Christmas tree in our school’s library.

A few days ago, my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas. The adorable mother that she is, she wanted to send me something in the mail, probably because she wanted to remind me of being home. I ended up giving her a list of some toiletry items that I can’t find here, like waxed dental floss and hair styling supplies. Of course, she excitedly put together a package for me. But, I realized when she asked me what I wanted for Christmas that I already had everything anyone could ever ask for.

I truly believe that I’m the luckiest girl on the planet. I have everything that I could possibly dream of. I have a wonderful, accepting and loving family. I have an adorable, caring and supportive partner in life. I have the most amazing and exceptional friends (really, you have to meet them “¦ you can’t imagine how great they are). And to top it all off, I’ve just completed my first semester of medical school on one of the most beautifully breathtaking islands on this planet. It really doesn’t get any better than this.

Only five short months ago, I was about to embark on one of the greatest adventures that I’ve ever undertaken. I traveled thousands of miles from home, leaving everything safe in my life, in an attempt to follow my passion of becoming a doctor. I simply cannot believe that I’ve made it through my fist semester. I’m really on my way to living out my dreams. Although it required some blood, sweat, and many tears, I “dug down deep,” as I tell my 10-year-old local friend Rennady to do, and made it all the way. Here’s to getting what you want for Christmas! If there were one piece of advice that I could give to everyone out there, it would be, “follow your passions,” and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t.

Click Here To View the Original Post on Medscape