Any thoughts would be much appreciated :)

[dopamemer]

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I hope everyone is staying safe in the midst of this crisis!
I am feeling a bit disheartened and confused by the current situation we are in with covid 19 as I am sure many others are as well. Prior to my university going online for the rest of the semester, I applied to some summer programs, but I regret being so picky of the internships because either I got rejected from them or they got cancelled due to corona. I wanted to either research specifically on epidemiology/public health or intern in a political setting regarding healthcare, policy, etc. I would love to be productive during this 6 month break but it feels hard to know what to do/plan ahead as we really do not know what the future holds and how this will affect ECs. I loved the advice from similar posts about being a crisis textline volunteer or improving my Spanish, but otherwise what else can I do for the time being? And for the summer, I am still looking for things to do and I guess anything at this point would be beneficial. My fallback option would be to just continue my MA work and researching on my campus if they let us back but I really wanted to have a meaningful experience during the summer that I could center my application around if that makes sense.

So my main question is if 1. anyone has suggestions on what to do this summer or 2. things I can do right now to help my application. I hope this was helpful to anyone else in a similar situation.
Thanks in advance for your input, it truly means a lot.

 

[tdod]

I hope everyone is staying safe in the midst of this crisis!
I am feeling a bit disheartened and confused by the current situation we are in with covid 19 as I am sure many others are as well. Prior to my university going online for the rest of the semester, I applied to some summer programs, but I regret being so picky of the internships because either I got rejected from them or they got cancelled due to corona. I wanted to either research specifically on epidemiology/public health or intern in a political setting regarding healthcare, policy, etc. I would love to be productive during this 6 month break but it feels hard to know what to do/plan ahead as we really do not know what the future holds and how this will affect ECs. I loved the advice from similar posts about being a crisis textline volunteer or improving my Spanish, but otherwise what else can I do for the time being? And for the summer, I am still looking for things to do and I guess anything at this point would be beneficial. My fallback option would be to just continue my MA work and researching on my campus if they let us back but I really wanted to have a meaningful experience during the summer that I could center my application around if that makes sense.

So my main question is if 1. anyone has suggestions on what to do this summer or 2. things I can do right now to help my application. I hope this was helpful to anyone else in a similar situation.
Thanks in advance for your input, it truly means a lot.

I would think that medical assistant + research is great, assuming the hours are not negligible. Depth of involvement is better than breadth. At whatever institution you are an MA see if you can improve the quality of care for patients. Otherwise I would recommend continuing your current engagements and focusing on grades/MCAT.

Maybe try to cultivate an interest in particular aspects of medicine. There are certain intangibles that cannot be taught in medical school. For example, I recently met a premed who wants to "cure cancer" ever since she might a pediatric oncology patient when the premed was younger. Despite her obvious ignorance about oncology, I was impressed by her desire to contribute to the field of medicine. We can teach students about anatomy, pathophysiology, procedural steps, and treatment guidelines. We cannot teach students to want to treat pediatric cancer, or to experience a thrill when a patient codes, and so forth.

You don't have to be a bleeding heart - maybe you love sports and just want to be the best damn knee surgeon around. The point is that you are passionate about some aspect of medicine, whether its treating patients, emotionally connecting with patients, or contributing to the scientific community. True passion is easily communicated in writing and will make you stand out in your interview and on your essays.

This is just my opinion, I haven't served on any admission boards. Hope this helps.

 

[dopamemer]

I would think that medical assistant + research is great, assuming the hours are not negligible. Depth of involvement is better than breadth. At whatever institution you are an MA see if you can improve the quality of care for patients. Otherwise I would recommend continuing your current engagements and focusing on grades/MCAT.

Maybe try to cultivate an interest in particular aspects of medicine. There are certain intangibles that cannot be taught in medical school. For example, I recently met a premed who wants to "cure cancer" ever since she might a pediatric oncology patient when the premed was younger. Despite her obvious ignorance about oncology, I was impressed by her desire to contribute to the field of medicine. We can teach students about anatomy, pathophysiology, procedural steps, and treatment guidelines. We cannot teach students to want to treat pediatric cancer, or to experience a thrill when a patient codes, and so forth.

You don't have to be a bleeding heart - maybe you love sports and just want to be the best damn knee surgeon around. The point is that you are passionate about some aspect of medicine, whether its treating patients, emotionally connecting with patients, or contributing to the scientific community. True passion is easily communicated in writing and will make you stand out in your interview and on your essays.

This is just my opinion, I haven't served on any admission boards. Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the response and was definitely one I needed to hear. I just started as a MA at a pediatric clinic this semester and I have loved it so far! I do want to find that inexplicable calling for medicine, do you have any recommended ways of going about finding my desire the way you mentioned? I have picked up serious reading again so hopefully that helps?

 

[tdod]

Thank you so much for the response and was definitely one I needed to hear. I just started as a MA at a pediatric clinic this semester and I have loved it so far! I do want to find that inexplicable calling for medicine, do you have any recommended ways of going about finding my desire the way you mentioned? I have picked up serious reading again so hopefully that helps?

Happy to help! It's hard to find your niche in medicine. I didn't find mine until a few months ago, halfway through my third year of medical school. The difficulty is that the daily work of different specialties varies tremendously. Psychiatrists spend a lot of time listening to people talk about the details of their emotional lives. Inpatient IM spends a lot of time monitoring labs and rounding on patients (at least in academic institutions). Surgeons like to see patients very little and spend their time in the OR. It's very difficult to know which of these things you would like until you try them. Shadowing is generally ineffective because
A) you don't know what's going on because you don't have a medical education.
B) you don't experience any of the satisfying aspects of practicing medicine - interacting with the patient, asking relevant questions and performing relevant physical exam (similar to detective work), and generating a differential and treatment plan that you think will help the patient.

I would recommend:
- personality tests, including the tests that specific to medical specialties
- talking with doctors about the day-to-day, hour-to-hour details of what they actually do. If you like puzzles you might like pathology. If you are patient, detail-oriented, and like working with your hands then you might like surgery. If you like forming long-term relationships with patients then you might like primary care. You might like internal medicine, although I'm not sure why.
- reading
- watching shows. this may be controversial but I think you can learn a lot about medicine from medical tv shows. of course you can also learn a lot of FALSE information from the tv shows, so you should counterbalance it with shadowing, if possible.

Helping people is an easy thing to talk about during interviews. It's natural to enjoy helping people, it's relevant to medicine, and it's something that you can understand without having extensive exposure to any particular speciality. If you do manage to zero in on a particular speciality that is great. Most premeds don't, and that is fine. It sounds like you are on a great path with MA work and research. Some shadowing is great to throw in just to make sure you have a realistic view of medicine - with the caveat that the there is tremendous variation between different specialities, so shadowing an ER doc, for example, won't teach you much about the work of a psychiatrist.

Sorry that I can't give more detailed and specific advice. The question of how to find your calling is a very difficulty one that takes most medical students don't figure out until after several months of clinical exposure.

 

[dopamemer]

Happy to help! It's hard to find your niche in medicine. I didn't find mine until a few months ago, halfway through my third year of medical school. The difficulty is that the daily work of different specialties varies tremendously. Psychiatrists spend a lot of time listening to people talk about the details of their emotional lives. Inpatient IM spends a lot of time monitoring labs and rounding on patients (at least in academic institutions). Surgeons like to see patients very little and spend their time in the OR. It's very difficult to know which of these things you would like until you try them. Shadowing is generally ineffective because
A) you don't know what's going on because you don't have a medical education.
B) you don't experience any of the satisfying aspects of practicing medicine - interacting with the patient, asking relevant questions and performing relevant physical exam (similar to detective work), and generating a differential and treatment plan that you think will help the patient.

I would recommend:
- personality tests, including the tests that specific to medical specialties
- talking with doctors about the day-to-day, hour-to-hour details of what they actually do. If you like puzzles you might like pathology. If you are patient, detail-oriented, and like working with your hands then you might like surgery. If you like forming long-term relationships with patients then you might like primary care. You might like internal medicine, although I'm not sure why.
- reading
- watching shows. this may be controversial but I think you can learn a lot about medicine from medical tv shows. of course you can also learn a lot of FALSE information from the tv shows, so you should counterbalance it with shadowing, if possible.

Helping people is an easy thing to talk about during interviews. It's natural to enjoy helping people, it's relevant to medicine, and it's something that you can understand without having extensive exposure to any particular speciality. If you do manage to zero in on a particular speciality that is great. Most premeds don't, and that is fine. It sounds like you are on a great path with MA work and research. Some shadowing is great to throw in just to make sure you have a realistic view of medicine - with the caveat that the there is tremendous variation between different specialities, so shadowing an ER doc, for example, won't teach you much about the work of a psychiatrist.

Sorry that I can't give more detailed and specific advice. The question of how to find your calling is a very difficulty one that takes most medical students don't figure out until after several months of clinical exposure.

I appreciate your response and I think your examples definitely make sense. This is a pretty crazy time for healthcare so hopefully all of us can find something meaningful about themselves and medicine - I am glad you had eventually found yours! Thanks again for the advice and I will be sure to let you know how it goes!