By Dr. Jessica Freedman
Author of: The Medical School Interview: From Preparation to Thank You Notes

Some pitfalls of the medical school interview are obvious: Don’t ramble, don’t say “um” too much, don’t be rude to people, don’t chew gum and don’t greet your interviewer like this: “Hey Dave. It is great to meet you. I read everything I could find about you on the internet.” But what pitfalls might not be so obvious?

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Emil Chuck

by Emil Chuck
Health Professions Advisor & Term Assistant Professor of Biology, George Mason University

Have you ever noticed that many schools note that they want a letter of recommendation from a “pre-health advisor or committee if available to the student”?  In this article, I’d like to give you the basics of what a pre-health advisor is from my perspective and why they can be your ally in the application process.

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Medical Schools, Technology, and the Crisis in HIT Education

By Glenn Laffel, MD, PhD
Senior Vice President, Clinical Affairs
Practice Fusion

Not too long ago, it seemed safe and reasonable to define health information technology (HIT) narrowly as the management of health information and its secure exchange between patients, providers, and insurers.[1]

For many, the definition effectively compartmentalized HIT. It was for someone else, not me.

That began to change when quality initiatives started forcing physicians to deal with performance data and patients began showing up with reprints of journal articles they hadn’t read themselves.

But nothing could have prepared physicians to handle the flood of HIT that inundates them today, a flood that threatens to sweep away established codes of professional conduct and disrupt the very processes by which care is rendered and doctors communicate with patients.

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by Anna Peck
SDN Staff Writer

It’s a given that there are healthcare professionals out there with substance abuse problems. But, as we prepare to enter practice, many of us find it difficult to imagine that we’ll be working with affected individuals, or that we could become affected ourselves. Few professional programs ask students to consider what they would do if they suspected or knew that someone in their workplace was impaired. And, still fewer programs formally acquaint students with recovery resources.

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by Paul Goleb

You have all certainly heard the expression “good things come to those who wait.”  Since our first days of pre-school, the virtue of patience has been constantly reinforced as a valuable trait.  For years we have stood in lines and waited for our turns.

In the fast paced life of a physician, in which potential decisions must sometimes be made in a matter of seconds, patience is sometimes an undervalued trait. In the realm of medicine, “waiting” almost seems to be a dirty word for both patients and physicians alike. Read the full story

by Laura Turner
SDN Staff Writer

Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz

Talya Miron-Shatz, PhD, is a decision scientist, studying the way people interpret medical information. She teaches consumer behavior at Wharton and is a keen public speaker, advocating the importance of understanding the psychological aspects of medical decision making.

She recently sat down to speak with SDN about how consumers and health care providers make medical decisions.

What is decision science, and how does it apply to health care decisions that consumers make?

Imagine you are designing a sticker promoting flossing. Should you say, “Flossing helps you prevent gum disease,” or should you emphasize the loss of protection that results from neglecting to floss? It turns out that people are more motivated to act when something they have is about to be taken away from them. So, when you’re in the bathroom at night, being aware of the potential risks to your gums might prompt you to dedicate a few extra minutes to the fine art of flossing. This, in a nutshell, is what decision science is about.

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by Joe Sisk
SDN Staff Author

Ahh, simple childhood games. Music playing. Walking around a circle of chairs. I’m eyeing the one closest to me.

*the music stops*
I scramble for a chair.

“I’m sorry, Joe. You can’t sit in a red chair. Those are for people with Outies. Your belly button is an Innie. You need to find a blue chair.”
“But the kindergarteners took most of the blue chairs for their game…”
“I’m sorry. Just see if you can find a left over one.”
I cry.

While this never actually happened, it is a recurring nightmare I have (and may explain my deep seated phobia of blue chairs). This game represents how health professional school admissions, particularly medical school admissions, work.

For medical schools, there are a good number of chairs that are spoken for before you’ve even submitted your AMCAS. How many depends on the types of alternate acceptance programs the school offers, but these programs contribute to the ultimate class size and subsequently are fewer seats available during the AMCAS application cycle.

As an informed applicant, what you can do is realize that you’re only going to be competing for the blue chair. Read the full story

Elizabeth Losada, MD
SDN Staff Writer

Prospective professional school applicants are often advised to avoid taking prerequisite classes at community college. Conventional belief among many pre-health students is that prerequisite classes taken at community colleges will be disparaged by admissions committees and could lead to the rejection of the applicant.

Such fears are expressed routinely in threads on the forums at Student Doctor Network; e.g., “Will taking a year of community college hurt my chances?” in the High School Forum and “Retaking at a CC after graduation/Chances?” in the What Are My Chances Forum. But are these fears and assumptions founded on actual admissions practices? Unfortunately, there is no clear consensus on this issue.

One school of thought suggests that students avoid doing prerequisites at community college because admissions committees consider a strong academic background essential to success. Such admissions criteria are supported by the findings of a 2007 study of medical students by Kleshinki, et al.[1] Read the full story

by Kara Hessel

Just over a year ago, I stood, heart racing and hands trembling, in front of my mailbox.  Any other Thursday I would have nonchalantly checked my mail as I came home from work, but today was an entirely different story.

A friend had texted me earlier in the day to let me know that decision letters had been delivered by our state school.  I had only been offered two interviews, and the letter which innocently lay in my mailbox represented my highest hope for attending medical school that year.  I paced for a full two minutes in front of my mailbox before I built up the courage to open it.  I probably would have paced longer, but someone came down my hallway, and I felt a bit foolish dancing around in front of the mailboxes.

Four attempts at inserting my key in the lock later, I was holding a too-thin, white, letter-sized envelope in my severely shaking hands.  Suddenly, I desperately needed to know the contents of that letter, and I ripped open the envelope with fervor akin to a starving man diving into a steak dinner.  I never made it past the first line.  The phrase

We regret to inform you…

jumped out of the page.

Panic gripped me, and it seemed that I could barely breathe, but no tears clouded my vision as I stared mindlessly at those dream-shattering words.  I stumbled down the hall to my apartment, where I collapsed in my desk chair.

In an attempt to think of something, anything, else, I opened the browser on my laptop and checked my e-mail.  I immediately noticed that I had received an e-mail from the one other school I had interviewed at, my last chance for the year.  I quickly opened the e-mail, only to discover that I had been waitlisted.

Utterly shocked, I crossed the room and lay down on my bed with one thought on my mind.  What in the world am I going to do now?

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