Kind of touchy subject but i had to ask...

[jr doctor in sd]

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For the people in med school...every med student i know thus far, including the ones online, are saying its SO hard to keep up with reading and studying and nonstop tests, etc.

So what happens if there is some unfortunate event that happens to you (i.e. a family death or severe illness or etc.) - are you just expected to still read like hundreds of pages a day and be ready for your tests? or is there like a month-off forgiveness or anything?

 

[lisichka]

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[LovelyMD]

an interesting question👍

i already can play a devil's advocate and ask you/anyone a similiar question: what if your patient is having a heart attack and needs an emergency surgery, would you have a luxury to grieve for a month then?

I think jr doctors question is valid. Having a patient die is different from having your own mother die, for example, and if you have mono, you aren't exactly going to be in shape to be reading hundreds of pages.

 

[axp107]

an interesting question👍

i already can play a devil's advocate and ask you/anyone a similiar question: what if your patient is having a heart attack and needs an emergency surgery, would you have a luxury to grieve for a month then?

How can you even compare the 2?

By the time you actually have your MD and finish your residency, you will be A LOT more mature than you are in med school. ALOT more.

 

[mindquick]

bump. i'm curious also, since my grandparents are getting really old...

 

[lisichka]

/

 

[armybound]

just learn everything the summer before med school starts so you won't run into this problem

 

[mindquick]

hmm what does maturity have to do with handling severe injuries, diseases, the death of relatives, etc.?

 

[lisichka]

.

 

[smq123]

For the people in med school...every med student i know thus far, including the ones online, are saying its SO hard to keep up with reading and studying and nonstop tests, etc.

So what happens if there is some unfortunate event that happens to you (i.e. a family death or severe illness or etc.) - are you just expected to still read like hundreds of pages a day and be ready for your tests? or is there like a month-off forgiveness or anything?

There is no "grace period." What usually happens is that you talk to your student dean or the course director and explain what happened. They will work with you to find the best solution for you that is still in agreement with school policy. This can be a variety of things.

The "big events" are usually not the problem - they demand so much time that you pretty much have to go talk to the course directors about how to handle it. The worst is when you get, say, a bad cold for a week - it might not really be bad enough for you to justify to the school that you should put off the test for a week, but you feel crappy enough that studying is hard.

 

[Phoenix.]

I would assume that at most schools, you'd have to take the semester/year off. Or maybe if you had enough time to "catch up" or take slightly delayed exams (maybe go into the summer after first year), they'd let you. I spoke to a woman where I work who got into U of C, did her first year, but then was too overwhelmed by family issues (deaths in the family) and trying to also work part-time, that she took a year off. Which then became two. And then they changed the curriculum. And then it was too difficult to integrate. This was some time ago, but she regrets not going back, and hates her job as an attorney (she had quit to go to med school, and ended right back where she started). She depressed me immensely when I was talking to her. She said that first year at U of C was the hardest thing she's ever done. Personally, I think she bit off more than she could chew by trying to work weekends and holidays as an attorney during her first year.....

Anyway, I saw this on UIC's web site, but it would only apply to entering med students, or those who have a problem during their first semester:

http://www.uic.edu/depts/mcam/ugme/pdfs/Decompressed_Program_2006-2007.pdf

 

[mindquick]

what about...

1) somebody attacks you during exam season and chops off your arm with a knife. the doctors sew back your arm, but you are in no condition to study or take tests

2) somebody murders your entire family. you are sad, but you are in med school. can you get any time off?

3) you are infected with the ebola virus, which is fatal and contagious. do you still have to go to class? and yes you still want to get your degree eventually.

 

[lisichka]

/

 

[Depakote]

Schools will work with their students... this can be anything from making a test up at the next convenient time (usually the next vacation). To taking a semester/year off. Once you're in, you're family and they will do everything they can help you...

 

[smq123]

I would assume that at most schools, you'd have to take the semester/year off. Or maybe if you had enough time to "catch up" or take slightly delayed exams (maybe go into the summer after first year), they'd let you.

It depends, some, on the school's curriculum set-up. For instance, if you're at a school that has block scheduling, you might be invited to take an "incomplete" for that course. You would then have to take a comprehensive final exam during the summer, and that grade would become your grade for the entire course. Like I said, it really depends on your situation, how much time you need, and what the course director/dean decides with you. There are lots of factors.

 

[smq123]

what about...

1) somebody attacks you during exam season and chops off your arm with a knife. the doctors sew back your arm, but you are in no condition to study or take tests

The neurologist, PT, vascular surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, and ER doctor stand around and pimp you as they work to save your arm. If you can answer 70% of their pimping questions, then you pass the course and don't have to take any more exams. (But they'll save your arm even if you don't answer any questions correctly - they're nice like that.)

2) somebody murders your entire family. you are sad, but you are in med school. can you get any time off?

You take a year off to find the one-armed man who did it. Along the way, you dig bullets out of your own leg and are followed by a federal marshall who looks kind of like Tommy Lee Jones.

3) you are infected with the ebola virus, which is fatal and contagious. do you still have to go to class? and yes you still want to get your degree eventually.

Of course you still go to class and lab - but you time it so that your classmates get sick two weeks before the exam. That way, they are technically "healthy" enough to take the exam (but not healthy enough to study), and therefore boost the curve so that you get the highest grade in the class. It's a gunner's dream come true! 😉

 

[swooptheeagle]

Hmm, I've found that most schools are very willing to work things out with students. At my school, if anything happens that is serious enough to hinder your test taking during the week of exams (even a serious cold), you just talk to the dean and you can take your exams in winter break. It sucks, but you gotta take care of what you gotta take care of.

And that post about if you get a month of to grieve for a patient that died under your care....wow..totally different.

 

[mindquick]

Lol...

 

[lisichka]

/

 

[CBG23]

This topic reminded me of something I have been thinking about the past few says...What happens if a doc (more specifically, a surgeon who has a ton of cases weekly) gets ill? Would he still be required to work? Wouldn't his illness be a liability to the patient (decreased performance/stamina and/or contaimination risk)? Any med students/ docs have an answer?

 

[lisichka]

/

 

[QofQuimica]

For the people in med school...every med student i know thus far, including the ones online, are saying its SO hard to keep up with reading and studying and nonstop tests, etc.

So what happens if there is some unfortunate event that happens to you (i.e. a family death or severe illness or etc.) - are you just expected to still read like hundreds of pages a day and be ready for your tests? or is there like a month-off forgiveness or anything?

Every school has a policy for dealing with students who have major personal issues come up. You may have to repeat an exam, a class or a block, or take a year off and then come back. Either way, it's kind of silly for you to be worrying about this before you've even gotten halfway through college. You really can't play this "what if" game; there are infinite things that could happen to you. Take things one day at a time, and if a problem does come up, you will deal with it then. Right now your concern should be to excel in college and spend time experiencing different activities and meeting new people. It is counterproductive to worry about things that in all likelihood will never happen several years in the future.

 

[jr doctor in sd]

Every school has a policy for dealing with students who have major personal issues come up. You may have to repeat an exam, a class or a block, or take a year off and then come back. Either way, it's kind of silly for you to be worrying about this before you've even gotten halfway through college. You really can't play this "what if" game; there are infinite things that could happen to you. Take things one day at a time, and if a problem does come up, you will deal with it then. Right now your concern should be to excel in college and spend time experiencing different activities and meeting new people. It is counterproductive to worry about things that in all likelihood will never happen several years in the future.

wow this Q got lots of activity fast!

haha oh of course! i didnt mean i was personally worried about anything haha i was just curious because i was curious what these people would do in the situation. Its probably because they said it at my bro's white coat ceremony. "over the next 4 yrs lots of changes will happen - from good to bad - like marriage to deaths of family members yadda yadda yadda" so i was so curious 😕

 

[QofQuimica]

wow this Q got lots of activity fast!

haha oh of course! i didnt mean i was personally worried about anything haha i was just curious because i was curious what these people would do in the situation. Its probably because they said it at my bro's white coat ceremony. "over the next 4 yrs lots of changes will happen - from good to bad - like marriage to deaths of family members yadda yadda yadda" so i was so curious 😕

I can see that it's weighing on you pretty heavily, because you've posted several threads now about similar topics. I know that telling you not to worry is easier said than done (and definitely easier for me to say than for you to do 😛 ), but the truth is that med schools invest *a lot* into students in terms of resources and money. If you are having a legitimate problem, they will do what they can to make sure you make it through the program. It doesn't look good for them to have students flunking out of school. Plus, flunking a student out wastes a seat that cannot be filled later since, unlike in college, we all start and graduate together in med school.

I will also tell you that a good work ethic will get you a lot farther in life (and in med school) than will raw talent or intellect. You do not need to be a genius to make it through medical school, but you do need to be a very hard worker.

 

[odddodo]

an interesting question👍

i already can play a devil's advocate and ask you/anyone a similiar question: what if your patient is having a heart attack and needs an emergency surgery, would you have a luxury to grieve for a month then?

I think some of you misunderstood this post; lisichka is asking, what if your mother died, yet you received a patient who had a heart attack and needed a surgery, giving you no time to grieve?

That said, it is a legitimate question...I don't know what I'd do, because fortunately I've never been faced with such a situation yet.

 

[jr doctor in sd]

I can see that it's weighing on you pretty heavily, because you've posted several threads now about similar topics. I know that telling you not to worry is easier said than done (and definitely easier for me to say than for you to do 😛 ), but the truth is that med schools invest *a lot* into students in terms of resources and money. If you are having a legitimate problem, they will do what they can to make sure you make it through the program. It doesn't look good for them to have students flunking out of school. Plus, flunking a student out wastes a seat that cannot be filled later since, unlike in college, we all start and graduate together in med school.

I will also tell you that a good work ethic will get you a lot farther in life (and in med school) than will raw talent or intellect. You do not need to be a genius to make it through medical school, but you do need to be a very hard worker.

haha thats the problem faced most. High School was a breeze to work so little and graduate with a 4.4 or some crazy number gpa. work is the hard way out =p. and ur right that it takes people farther

 

[jr doctor in sd]

I think some of you misunderstood this post; lisichka is asking, what if your mother died, yet you received a patient who had a heart attack and needed a surgery, giving you no time to grieve? Why would you grieve for a patient who had a heart attack? You'd grieve for someone dead, not someone still alive (albeit critically ill).

That said, it is a legitimate question...I don't know what I'd do, because fortunately I've never been faced with such a situation yet.

I thought they taught you about this the first couple years of med school? like pretty similar training as you receive before hospice work. But i could be 100% off

 

[Aynsl156]

what about...

1) somebody attacks you during exam season and chops off your arm with a knife. the doctors sew back your arm, but you are in no condition to study or take tests"

or better yet, the microsurgeon on call decides he will not operate on you because he has an identity crisis since his wife had cheated on him with the young hot male nurse. and the medical center supports his decision, because it is only human, right? we are all human beings after all?! and need our time to grieve... so you end up handless with not enough extremities to strangle this doc or his wife:cry:

I don't know about you, but I can strangle pretty effectively with my legs....

 

[lisichka]

.

 

[armybound]

I don't know about you, but I can strangle pretty effectively with my legs....

rawr.

 

[lisichka]

.

 

[lsumedgirl]

Schools will work with their students... this can be anything from making a test up at the next convenient time (usually the next vacation). To taking a semester/year off. Once you're in, you're family and they will do everything they can help you...

Depakote is right. I'm very fortunate to go to a school that really cares about its students. Obviously, there's still a ****load of work, but when crisises (sp?) arise (and believe me, they do!) the dean and faculty are wonderful about working with students to keep them in school and help them out. As they told us at orientation, this requires more work than we've ever encountered in our lives... but when problems arise, don't hesitate to ask for help.

 

[mvenus929]

let me clarify: your close relative dies, five minutes after that you are on call and have many difficult patients who need your care. would you skip your work and join your family to grieve for a relative or try to put your problems on hold and take care of patients? i only used this example to emphasize that medical school schedule is intense and students dont always have the luxury to take the time off without getting behind. maybe a year can be skipped, but what if next year your great grandpa dies also? then you'll be in medschool for ten years, since life always brings something unexpected.

Well, I personally think your great grandparents are a little different than your parents. My great grandma starved herself to death just before Christmas last year, but I hadn't seen her since I was a baby, so it wasn't a horrible thing for me. My mom was a little torn up about it. On the other hand, if my mom died tomorrow, I would probably be seriously unstable for a while.

That being said, if I found out my mom died and I was on call, I would do my best to think about the here and now. Sometimes I'm good at that, other times I'm not. In the event I'm not, I call and beg for another physician to come and take my place, and tell them that I owe them a huge favor.

Besides, someone has to have a backup plan somewhere down the line. If a doctor gets into a car accident and can't operate that day because he/she is in the ICU, someone will have to pick up the slack.

seriously though, with everything said before, i really hope that such problems will be few and far between, and we'll be spared all the agony of such unusual circumstances. God, I hope everyone is healthy, safe and sound.😍 familywise.

I hope no one has to deal with such extreme agony during such a stressful time as medical school, and that no one has to deal with it multiple times within a short time frame. I know people who have (minus the med school part... just regular school), and I can't fathom what they're going through.

 

[smq123]

That being said, if I found out my mom died and I was on call, I would do my best to think about the here and now. Sometimes I'm good at that, other times I'm not. In the event I'm not, I call and beg for another physician to come and take my place, and tell them that I owe them a huge favor.

Besides, someone has to have a backup plan somewhere down the line. If a doctor gets into a car accident and can't operate that day because he/she is in the ICU, someone will have to pick up the slack.

Most call schedules are designed with this in mind - they will have designated someone who would fill in if the doctor on call cannot come in (for whatever reason). In that case, you would contact the chief resident (or the senior resident on call with you), and they would contact that person. It has to be for a good reason, but people understand that things happen.

That being said, I've heard some crazy stories about people who keep working despite what just happened in their personal lives. I heard of a resident who found out, while on call, that her husband (who was serving in Afghanistan) had been shot through the neck. She just kept working because it was better than "sitting at home by the phone." She also said that staying busy kept her mind off of stuff that she couldn't do anything about. [Miraculously, he survived with minimal damage. The bullet avoided all the major structures.] That kind of stoicism, though, is crazy.

I thought they taught you about this the first couple years of med school? like pretty similar training as you receive before hospice work. But i could be 100% off

Not really. They help you deal with stuff as it comes up, but they generally don't give you a formal talk on what to do if a personal crisis happens. There's little benefit to discussing hypotheticals in great depth, and it just takes up time.

 

[Ashers]

And for a answer with stuff that's not hypothetical...

Beginning of second semester M2 year my great grandma died (my family's very close). I found out the day I got back to school from home, so I made sure I got all my work done (meant I didn't have time to do fun stuff with my friends that first week of class), and I was able to skip 2 days of school to go to the funeral.

In March of M2 year, I had emergency surgery, and I had to miss 3 days of school because that was all I was given an excuse for (now on OB/gyn, some of the residents said if they were the attending they would've let me out for a week.) I had issues just trying to sit in class let alone study while on darvocet because it was painful to sit. That surgery meant I couldn't go anywhere for spring break, so I stayed in WI and tried to catch up. All not fun, and all kinda jacked up my year.

You can get through stuff, it just may mean working a lot harder for a while.

 

[njbmd]

For the people in med school...every med student i know thus far, including the ones online, are saying its SO hard to keep up with reading and studying and nonstop tests, etc.

So what happens if there is some unfortunate event that happens to you (i.e. a family death or severe illness or etc.) - are you just expected to still read like hundreds of pages a day and be ready for your tests? or is there like a month-off forgiveness or anything?

One of my classmates experienced problems in her pregnancy and was placed on bed rest. We all pitched in and brought materials and studied with her. We even took digital photos of lab results and brought a microscope so that she could keep up with us (our professor let us borrow slides). She was able to download the Powerpoints and MP-3s from the web so she was set. She ended up with a healthy baby and easily passed her exams on time. One of the professors even came and proctored her exam while she was in bed.

Our school administration would do everything possible to make sure that the students who had things like deaths in their family or illness were able to get the study materials and take their exams. They also would recommend leave of absence if a student was so distracted that they could not keep up with them material (with no penalty).

Having a good administration and keeping good lines of communication open with the Dean of Students is always a good idea when problems arise. The Deans are there to assist students. They also have many resources that they can make available if the student asks.

There is no "month off forgiveness" as every student has to complete all coursework and thus taking a leave of absence can keep your academics intact and allow time for settling affairs/bereavement/recovery.

 

[supersleuthMD11]

One thing I've realized now that I'm in med school is that it is nearly impossible to not get through med school once you're in.

Along those lines: The avenues for support are many. Our deans are fantastic, and there is tutoring, lecture transcripts, group study, mentoring, you name it. And it is not unheard of to have a dean personally work on your behalf in times of crisis, or to make accommodations. I know of one person who started M1, took a medical leave, and was welcomed back again as an M1 - in other words, you shouldn't worry about having to start over or apply again if you have a catastrophic event.

Might I add, on another note - there is a light at the end of the tunnel here! I had a pretty rough admissions season myself last year, but things tend to work out. Also, as for the rumors saying "if you haven't heard from a place by February, all bets are off," it is absolutley not true. I heard from my wonderful med school in late February, interviewed early March, and got in three days later. So don't worry, keep your head above water, have some fun!, and plug along. You'll all do wonderfully.

-Supersleuth.

 

[jr doctor in sd]

One of my classmates experienced problems in her pregnancy and was placed on bed rest. We all pitched in and brought materials and studied with her. We even took digital photos of lab results and brought a microscope so that she could keep up with us (our professor let us borrow slides). She was able to download the Powerpoints and MP-3s from the web so she was set. She ended up with a healthy baby and easily passed her exams on time. One of the professors even came and proctored her exam while she was in bed.

Our school administration would do everything possible to make sure that the students who had things like deaths in their family or illness were able to get the study materials and take their exams. They also would recommend leave of absence if a student was so distracted that they could not keep up with them material (with no penalty).

Having a good administration and keeping good lines of communication open with the Dean of Students is always a good idea when problems arise. The Deans are there to assist students. They also have many resources that they can make available if the student asks.

There is no "month off forgiveness" as every student has to complete all coursework and thus taking a leave of absence can keep your academics intact and allow time for settling affairs/bereavement/recovery.

WOW. that seems so nice. Im schocked but very impressed that all of that was done. If i was her, i'd be so grateful. Sounds like a great med school you go to, and im sure most if not all are the same 🙂

 

[almo88]

For the people in med school...every med student i know thus far, including the ones online, are saying its SO hard to keep up with reading and studying and nonstop tests, etc.

So what happens if there is some unfortunate event that happens to you (i.e. a family death or severe illness or etc.) - are you just expected to still read like hundreds of pages a day and be ready for your tests? or is there like a month-off forgiveness or anything?

A friend of mine was a first year, in his 3rd month I believe, when his father was diagnosed with cancer. He talked to the dean and was offered a seat for the following year.

 

[AnesthesiaMD]

bump. i'm curious also, since my grandparents are getting really old...

lol