For those with ADHD

[lil pook]

i agree 100%

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[AmoryBlaine]

So which of these things would you who arguring against me be ok with?

-extended time on exams for students who work slow
-allow some students who need more sleep to get to the hospital 1 hour later
-overweight students excused from scrubbing into surgeries greater than 3 hours in length
-decrease the number of patients students with busy lives outside of medicine are expected to carry

I don't see any substantive difference between those and the fact that some students are allowed to take drugs that enhance academic performance.

These "symptoms" you describe happen to everyone. You need to make lists to remember things? So does every resident. You get distracted when studying cell bio? So does every medical student. You find it easier to concentrate on things that interest you? So does every single person on this planet. The fact that med school is hard does not mean that you have ADD.

With that, I'm out, it's been fun. Thanks for the vigorous (and remarkably civil) discussion.

AB

 

[Hoya11]

I don't see any substantive difference between those and the fact that some students are allowed to take drugs that enhance academic performance.

These "symptoms" you describe happen to everyone.

So what keeps you from going to a psych and getting a prescription?
If everyone has the option of taking them it is your choice if you dont.
Stimulants are fair game for med school. As you said it is demanding and these people prob dont have reall ADD and only need temporary help, but they are probably closer to ADD than those who dont feel the need to take anything.

 

[Miami_med]

So which of these things would you who arguring against me be ok with?

-extended time on exams for students who work slow
-allow some students who need more sleep to get to the hospital 1 hour later
-overweight students excused from scrubbing into surgeries greater than 3 hours in length
-decrease the number of patients students with busy lives outside of medicine are expected to carry

I don't see any substantive difference between those and the fact that some students are allowed to take drugs that enhance academic performance.

These "symptoms" you describe happen to everyone. You need to make lists to remember things? So does every resident. You get distracted when studying cell bio? So does every medical student. You find it easier to concentrate on things that interest you? So does every single person on this planet. The fact that med school is hard does not mean that you have ADD.

With that, I'm out, it's been fun. Thanks for the vigorous (and remarkably civil) discussion.

AB

I've argued that none of these exemptions should be given. With regards to the drugs, I don't take them. However, many people use drugs that enhance performance in medicine (think caffeine). The fact that some are socially acceptable and some are not is purely arbitrary. For those that choose to use the drugs and obtain them legally, they will have to weight the costs and benefits of that decision. That is all.

 

[lil pook]

without caffeine, i would fail med school....

does that mean i am a DRUGGIE?

i think not....but i certainly do get your point.

people that don't have ADD or are close to anyone with it, don't realize what it entails.

like i said before. the first 2 years suck and require a lot of concentration on material that is probably an ADDer's nightmare walking.

good luck to all you guys.

i KNOW you will all be FABULOUS doctors!!

 

[vtucci]

So which of these things would you who arguring against me be ok with?

-extended time on exams for students who work slow
-allow some students who need more sleep to get to the hospital 1 hour later
-overweight students excused from scrubbing into surgeries greater than 3 hours in length
-decrease the number of patients students with busy lives outside of medicine are expected to carry

I don't see any substantive difference between those and the fact that some students are allowed to take drugs that enhance academic performance.

These "symptoms" you describe happen to everyone. You need to make lists to remember things? So does every resident. You get distracted when studying cell bio? So does every medical student. You find it easier to concentrate on things that interest you? So does every single person on this planet. The fact that med school is hard does not mean that you have ADD.

With that, I'm out, it's been fun. Thanks for the vigorous (and remarkably civil) discussion.

AB

Amory- you clearly still do not understand what it is like to have ADD and that is fine.

Everything in life is a matter of degree-- regular med students make lists to remember things and have a hard time concentrating on areas of medicine they find boring- no kidding.

There is a difference in having a difficult time keeping attention reading a cell bio book and being totally unable to do it even when you have an exam the following monday and really want to do it. This is not a matter of being burnout or simply having studied so much that your brain will not cooperate.

These difficulties have nothing to do with medical school being hard. Law school is also hard. Reading 1000 pages of ancient property law from the UK circa 1400 is not a way anyone would choose to spend their time either. People have different triggers and different issues

With respect to your analogies, I am curious why you chose overweight students and 3 hour surgeries? Fatigue? Dehydration? It is just as easy to mention extremely thin students and 3 hour surgeries (as some of them can pass out because of venous pooling). Also, if the reason a student works slow is a learning disability like dyslexia, I would have no problem with a time extension.

 

[brianmartin]

"my Attention Deficit Disorder lets me hyper focus."

Priceless

To me that seems like saying, "extreme happiness is a well-established manifestation of depression."

This is a simplistic, black & white way of looking at it.

My ADD is only a problem in certain situations. I can think of times when I could concentrate just fine, in the OR for example, you have instant feedback, you are holding an instrument in your hand and doing something with it. With that kind of "in the moment" sensory information, the ADD brain excels and actually hyper-concentrates.

Imagine the opposite - someone with unlimited capacity for memorizing facts from a lecture or textbook, but no real ability to focus in on the real-world task at hand.

These are extreme examples, whereas most people are somewhere in the middle. ADD people tend in one direction. Some people lean the other way.

Once again, I wonder if you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

Of course I am. Do you think that to be a doctor, all your personality traits must fall in exactly the middle of the normal distribution? Come on, life is more complex than that. There are different specialties, many challenges to face, and many different people to face them.

I may have ADD, but I did the same bio, chem, o-chem, and physics tests you did...I just did it differently. Memorizing gross anatomy? I can do that too, in fact I enjoy doing it...I took A&P and had to memorize all the bones, all the muscles. As an ADD person, you might assume that I struggled, but no...I actually did really well.

I do well academically for the same reason anybody else does: I know how my brain operates, and how I need to study. Over the years, I have developed, as Vtucci correctly calls them, "compensatory mechanisms." In reality, everyone develops these mechanisms, and they are unique to the individual.

One of my compensatory mechanisms is low-dosage stimulant use. How is that any different than say, using music to study, or group studying (neither of which I can do)? Would I say that someone who uses music to study is "having their cake and eating it too"?

Once again, no one is "cheating" by taking low-dosage stimulants. You seem to be afraid that I might be gaining an unnatural advantage over you by taking LOW dosages of stimulants. But the existence of stimulant drugs is no less natural than the existence of medical schools. They correct my problem, just as music corrects someone else's problem.

The funny thing is that one day, you'll be standing next to me or someone like me who is a doctor as well, and we'll both be good at what we do. The fact that all the people in this thread are here, discussing the intricacies of ADD, is what sets us apart as people who are interested in human beings and how they work, ADD or not.

 

[USCTex]

Disability concessions are a touchy subject. Such is especially true with a subjective diagnosis like ADD.

I got an ADD diagnosis at the beginning of this year. I reluctantly trotted from my PCP over to a psychologist and went through hours of torturously boring attention and IQ tests (push the button when the blue square and only the blue square pops up on the screen, etc). I feel I got as objective a diagnosis (not merely based on history) as anyone who has ever been diagnosed with ADD and even I still have doubts about the reality of ADD as a true pathological process.

Indeed my story sounds a lot like vtucci with the high functioning ADD. I even had a non-traditional education history which I really thought was causing any problems I was having.

It honestly did not occur to me that my ADD could be the problem because I had coped with it quite successfully before. I also never disclosed to them that my doctors thought I had it when I was young because I did not have the records of a formal diagnosis dating back that far. I thought I was having trouble because I came from a non-traditional background.

I will say Adderall xr is a wonder drug, but clearly it 'helps' those even without an ADD diagnosis...which is why it is so abused on campuses.

I won't go to disability services and ask for extra time. I will confess, I no longer have trouble finishing on time (at least compared to my classmates), so there isn't real reason to. But I think I can honestly say, even if I did need the extra time, I wouldn't ask for it.

I truly believe there are certain things that should be required of you to be a physician, and if your unfortunate lot in life is a disability which limits you from being able to have success in those things then I'm not sure concessions are in order. I don't mean to offend anyone and I'd be happy for a civil debate over whether something as mundane as being able to "FINISH A TEST IN A TIME FRAME" should be a requirement for becoming a physician.

As for the amphetamines themselves being an undue advantage that is a baloney argument when they're used with a diagnosis. Even if I have my personal doubts about ADD (or at least its over diagnosis) clearly the medical community does not.

 

[Hook17]

x

 

[Tristy]

Is it true that your body's response to a stimulant (adderall, ritalin, whatever) may be diagnostic as to whether or not you have ADHD? (As in if you take the drug and feel calm and focused as opossed to euphoric/nervous/high you may have ADHD). Just curious because I heard this from a psychiatrist.

 

[LostAtSea]

Does anybody have any experience with confronting ADHD in the third year? I survived somewhere in the middle/lower end of the pack in a top 30 med school for the first two years but I'm getting killed this year. My memory had abandoned me, I made tons of mistakes looking at charts and I can't sustain a minutes interest on rounds. Did anybody feel the same way? Did anything help (meds/notes)? I've been ADHDish for a long time but it's suddenly become full blown this year.

 

[distracted]

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[MrFoots]

thanks for the forum

 

[mindquick]

I learned in my Cognitive Science seminar that ADHD helps you learn faster. This is a direct effect of how brains work and even computer AI is subject to this "law". So attention difficiency is also an advantage and probably a disproportionate amount of med school students have it.