Some advice for new medical students...

Over the past few weeks I’ve had the tremendous joy of learning that several students that I’ve been mentoring (including my nephew!) have been accepted to medical school. It brought me back to my own first days in the Gross Anatomy laboratories—and prompted me to reflect on what advice I might give to students beginning on this incredible journey.

Here’s what I came up with:

1. Keep a journal. You will see and experience many unexpected things. Don’t ever forget how they made you feel the first time because that is how your patients will likely experience them. It will make you a better doctor.

2. Find mentors, study what makes them great, and copy shamelessly. Some of your best role models in life will be the residents and faculty you interact with in medical school. Pay attention to their habits, their gesticulations, their mode of asking questions. How they position themselves at the patient’s bedside. This is how you will evolve and develop your own clinical style over time. 

3. Make the deliberate transition from student to professional. As a student, you are often checking boxes en route to the next destination. As a professional, you are learning because you need the knowledge acquire to serve. I learned this important lesson late—and it is one of my regrets about my first years of medical school.

4. On a related note, exit the rat race. Make the transition to worrying only about your own achievement and performance—and no one else’s. Your classmates will be your lifetime colleagues, not your competition. Always treat them that way.

5. Make your classmates look good. On the wards, in didactic sessions, in small group sessions—the very best medical students are the ones who are attuned to the group dynamic and find ways to support the success of their classmates. Everyone notices and appreciates a team player. Medicine is, ultimately, a team sport.

6. Take advantage of your student status. At most medical schools, everyone is eager to teach students about their fields. Take advantage of that willingness and get to know all the great fields of medicine—even if you don’t intend to train in them. It will make you a much better doctor when you are able to speak knowledgeably to your patients about what might happen in specialty clinics or procedures outside of your own.

7. Preserve Meaningful Relationships. Medical training can be an isolating or tough time. Too many people “put their lives on hold” when they are in medical school or residency. Be sure to regularly visit family and friends. Invest in your personal life. Don’t lose your life’s bigger picture amidst the small things. 

8. Have fun. Medical school is not exactly Gray’s Anatomy, but those TV shoes are inspired in part by real life shenanigans. Make sure you have a few good stories to tell when all is said and done. 

9. Read something interesting in the literature about every single patient. Those encyclopedic physicians we admire didn’t become that way in a day. It was a slow and steady race that usually began with a commitment to read about topics big and small. Those esoteric factoids can be a lot of fun and can often be the difference between merely average medical care and cracking the tough case no one else can.

10. Get student subscriptions to several medical journals (they are cheap) and figure out which one you pick up out of joy and curiosity. This will help with your specialty choice. Hat tip to Nancy Oriol who gave us this advice when she was Dean of Students at Harvard Medical School. It was absolutely right. 

I thought I would stop at 10–but I have just a few more thoughts...

11. Avoid cynics and cynicism—it’s a contagious disease. You’ll learn in your microbiology classes that cynicism is a viral illness. Surround yourself with folks who are tuned to see the best in the experience.  

12. Be sure to take advantage of opportunities to learn about medicine’s bigger picture. Healthcare policy. Medical ethics. Medical sociology. These are often presented as “fluff” classes in the scheme of many more “hardcore” topics in medical school, but are often far more relevant to your future than other classes that tend to get more respect in medical school. 

13. Stand up for your patients—even as a medical student. You may be their only advocate in the world. Take that responsibility seriously. 

Tthere are a lot of people who no longer recommend that people attend medical school. I’m not one of them. Colleagues like UCLA Hospitalist physician Russ Kerbel—whose love for medicine is truly infectious—keep me feeling like for some people medicine is not just an option, it’s a calling. 

It’s now up to you to make the most of it.

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Doctors, current medical students, what’s some of your advice for students about to start medical school?