Steven B.
Photo provided by Steven B.
If you’re reading this, it’s okay to put yourself before your studies.
When you start medical school, you inevitably hear or read all about how little time you will have. When I began my preclinical studies, administration made the analogy that we would be drinking from a firehose with regards to how much information we had to learn. We had some professors that went on to say they would fall asleep reading their textbooks nearly every night and that’s how they performed well. There are many other stories like this and, if you’re like me, hearing and reading them in real time truly just induces anxiety: “did I make the right choice,” “will I be strong enough,” “will I be able to help my future patients,” and on and on the questions go.
It was these sentiments that led to me studying for 10-12 hours a day at the beginning of my first year. I felt behind, as I had taken multiple gap years, and did not remember how to study. I got my first exam score back and was devastated when I saw the result. I passed, but I was putting in so much time and effort and it didn’t feel as though it was translating! Going into my second exam, I studied even longer, going so far as to watch relevant YouTube videos in my free time to try and master the information. Again, however, I barely passed. Although I was only a month into school, I felt as though I was fighting an uphill battle. I was feeling anxious when going on dates, walking my dog, or even exercising because I wasn’t studying and felt behind. It all came to a head when I had a talk with a girl I was seeing and told her I don’t know if it’ll work out because I was so anxious with school. “Would I really have to give up so much just to become a doctor?”
The answer is no, you don’t have to. Part of why I was so anxious was because I wasn’t giving myself that space to just be me. I moved to a new area at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to undertake a difficult challenge. I had to recognize that there is an adjustment period with medical school, as there is with every other new thing in life. Once I realized that the way I was going through school wasn’t going to be sustainable, I made it a rule that school would be my job. I would only do school things from 7-5, and all the time around that window would become dedicated to myself. This is a balance that worked for me, and it allowed me to maintain relationships with my family and college friends, build new relationships with my fellow classmates, continue working on my own health, and (most importantly) keep my sanity and personality throughout it all. My purpose in writing this is to implore you to make time for yourself and your interests. It will help you in the long run, which in turn will make the grind of school and beyond more tolerable. If you’re reading this, I urge you to go out to that new movie, go join that random rec kickball league, go try the new restaurant, go to that concert, or do anything else you may have been thinking of cancelling because you have school things to do. At the end of the day, we are all human, and we all deserve to give ourselves time out of each day to do something that is solely for our own happiness.
Steven B., Kansas City University
Class of 2024
Q: How do you cope with the stressors of The Match?
A: The Match process is so strange because it is filled with this sense of wonder and fear and everything in between. You hope you end up some place you truly want or in the specialty of your choice, but you do not want to get your hopes too high to protect yourself from being so devastated if it doesn’t go your way. My now wife and I (same girl that I referenced above) were in an even trickier situation where I participated in an early match, so we could not truly couples match and had to hope for the best. Throughout our interview seasons, it was a constant spreadsheet of “If I match here, you’ve interviewed at x number of places within a half hour drive, we could maybe live together given this particular traffic and housing situation” (think of the Charlie Day investigation meme from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia). Those months of calculating and hoping and waiting were so tough. The only thing that truly helped was not thinking about it more than I had to and throwing myself into my rotations and new experiences; I ran my first triathlon during this time and played a lot of Warzone. When I matched, I felt a sense of relief that I was heading to a place I wanted, but also, I was even more nervous because that meant I had more weeks of waiting to find out if she was coming with me. The best thing that helped both of our anxieties during this was our open communication. Being able to talk through our hopes and fears and know the other understood exactly what we were feeling made the process more bearable.
Q: Was there a particular rotation or patient interaction that changed how you view mental health in medicine? How did it shape you?
When I was on my trauma surgery rotation, I was taking care of an individual who was in an accident and suffered a C3-C7 injury. The applicable mnemonic here is “C3, 4, 5 keeps the diaphragm alive.” We knew what was coming, and the surgeon made sure the family knew what would come next as well. For me, however, the way it was delivered opened my eyes to what this job requires of you and can change in you. “Focus on the science. When delivering tough news, just focus on the science” they say. I understand why. I saw more patients pass on this rotation than any other, and I saw the surgeons have these difficult conversations over and over again. They had done this so many times that it appeared as though they were numb to death. In some of them, you could see they were still carrying the weight of the patient with them in following days, but in others you could not. This made me realize that I never wanted to appear this way to colleagues and patients, job requirements be damned. I want my future patients to think of me as an empathetic and sympathetic physician and know that, while I may be expressing myself in a composed and professional manner, I am still understanding what they are feeling. So many of us got into this field because we care, and I refuse to suppress that aspect. To feel is human. We need to allow ourselves space to do this, whether in private or public.
Q: What change do you hope to see when it comes to mental health in medical trainees?
A: The big answer is that I hope administration and older attendings continue to see the light that mental health struggles are a big issue facing this population. On rotations, you still hear comments that begin with “back in my day” that go on to eviscerate the need for change. However, I’ve also run into many attendings who understand that times do indeed change and that many trainees no longer view medicine as the sole focus of their lives. This is key, as they are the ones pushing for more mental health resources, better working hours, and better conditions for their trainees. For my own views, I hope that the ACGME 80 hour limit averaged over 4 weeks becomes more enforced, that medical students have a standard for what is expected of them for each rotation regardless of who the attending may be, and that attendings and administration remember that trainees are there to learn and train and should not be expected to already know everything when they show up (insert shocked Pikachu face).
Several studies have revealed that medical students, physicians, and healthcare professionals experience mental health symptoms at rates significantly higher than the general population. Stethos[Cope] is a chapter of IfYoureReadingThis designed to help medical students and professionals cope with the unique stressors of medical training and change the narrative of mental health in medicine.
To read more letters and interviews from students, and to learn more about mental health in the medical community, visit the Stehos[Cope] home page.