Med school student here, finishing up my 2nd year in June!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !"
...but I was hoping it would be ok if I barged in here to ask you all a question?
How are you liking it? I'm a lost undergrad trying to decide what on earth I should do with my life...any feedback you have to offer would be fabulous!
It's an incredible amount of work but i can't imagine doing anything else! It's extremely interesting, and challenging, and fascinating (to me).
But like i said... a lot of work. So my advice would be, do it, if you know you want to be a doctor. The people i know who did it because they didn't know what to do didn't pass.
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
Because if it's not what you really want to do... you're probably not going to be willing to put in the hours and give up your social life.
And yet here we are :) the willing.
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
hello, future doctors. just a lowly xray tech here. i am glad at least some of you mentioned being a doctor is your calling. no room for slackers when it comes to patient care. i love being an xray tech. school was challenging but it's so much better when you can practice what you've learned.
Seriously, I can get all happy when I see a pretty X-ray. I know I'm weird ;-D but I don't care.
And yes, I don't like slackers who become doctors just for the money or status that it brings. For me, it really is my calling and I don't understand others who just do it as something that 'seems like fun'...
Although like i said in a previous post, those are the ones who usually fail. Which is a good thing. Not that I like seeing anyone fail, but they take up other studies just fine... just not these.
Speaking of... *goes back to studying*
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
well i will then admit that i get all happy when i see an obvious fracture. yeah, that sounds weird. i tell my students, "It sucks to be him but it looks cool to us." lol
a lot of people see us at our job, we make it look pretty effortless, and they all of a sudden want to be an xray tech. they only see the quick and easy side of it and think we are just monkeys who push buttons. kinda funny. radiography school was more challenging than my other degrees for sure.
keep up the good work, doctors. and remember to share the love with your friendly allied health techs. you never know, one of them may have a big old crush on you like i have on a certain ER doctor. hehe
I get all happy whenever I see an obvious fracture, EVEN on my own radiographs. I broke my toe about six months ago and I hobbled over to the display and analyzed my own photo... ;-D
And I'll keep it in mind to share the love. Who knows, a friendly allied tech might develop a crush on me! ;-P
I'll try to keep that in mind! Just in case i meet someone interesting.
But what you said is true, and I think that most health jobs (okay so i translated that literally from what we call them in french but you get the gist of it) require a lot of work. I respect all of them :)
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
I want to be an Ortho Mc. Badass, like Callie Torres. Actually I've wanted to be an ortho since before she was on Grey's (ever since my first class taught by an orthopedic surgeon)...
I LOVE cardiovascular surgery and cardiovascular research, I just did an internship in the research wing of the hospital involving the development of biodegradable vascular grafts... it's awesome.
So yeah... I think i'll become a cardiovascular surgeon/researcher :-)
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
You'll have to explain the concept of biodegradable vascular grafts to me. Is not the whole purpose of the dam' things that they stay in there and in one piece?
They're developing this graft that, as it degrades, is replaced by the hosts own cells and extracellular matrix. The vessel is re-created. So instead of having a foreign structure implanted forever (and the medication that goes along with it, for obvious reasons), they would have a brand new vessel. Another big advantage is that endothelium has antithrombotic proprieties, so it's a natural protection for thromboemboli etc, which happen still too often with stents, dacron etc...
I wrote a report about it (actually i'm doing a Powerpoint presentation for next thursday's exam... yikes!) and so far the results of studies on rats and pigs are really promising. It would be primarily for coronary arteries and such, not big ones (re-creating a human abdominal aorta from scratch has yet to be seen...)
That's about it :) But i love it!!!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
I think so too. The doctor conducting this research group is a genius. But let's not forget his whole team!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
we're doing a module on the CV system right now and we got to do open-heart surgery on pigs earlier this week and after doing open-chested cardiac massage on the pig I thought, "what a cool specialty this must be..." but ah, what a long residency! I don't think I'm cut out for cardiothoracic surgery anyway, but the microvascular stuff is definitely the future....good luck!
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
I want to do stuff with genetics and fertility so I hope to take a residency in OB/GYN and then would love a genetics fellowship, or maybe reproductive endocrinology...all of the subspecialties of obstetrics and gynecology have my interest right now I guess.
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
Genetics are great, as well as all obstetrics and gynecology subspecialties, I wish you the best of luck!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
Hello! One more med student here;-) It's so much work but a the end of the day it feels great because being a doctor means having a special relationship with people. Getting to know the patients and work with them is amazing! Anyway good luck everybody.
4th year med student here. Currently on my clerkship/junior internship. :)
The biodegradeable vascular grafts mentioned above are fascinating. I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon or a cardiologist once upon a time. lol I'm still leaning towards internal med for my residency butI haven't decided on what I'll pursue afterwards.
I probably don't qualify to post here, but in the spirit of the community, I'll do it anyway. I once was a med student. I strayed into research after I was qualified as a doctor, instead of seeing patients. As some posters rightly said, you've got to like it to get into medicine. I didn't know myself, then. Luckily, I found something I like on the side (research), but I had to step back and become a student again in order to get a PhD. I see a difference in the MD-type of people and the PhD-type ones; MDs are smart, but tend to overlook details (they are usually lousy experimenters), while real PhDs are nuts! They pay enormous attention to details the world doesn't care. I guess this quality doesn't mesh well with medicine. No wonder I am in science now. I, however, am very grateful to those who take up medicine. It's a tough job being a doctor.
Haha, good point. Those MD/PhDs. Well, they can fall into either category, if you look at them carefully.
That's why I'm old! :D I was doing (sort of) research as an MD, but felt I was doing lousy "MD-science" (not to say there aren't any great MD scientists), so was compelled to do a PhD. It took only 3 years to get it all done, because I did it in Britain. It's a good deal.
nice to see fellow medics on here, i have to choose F1 specialties this summer and i dont know what to choose :S i know i want to do medicine and not surgery, and reading through some of the posts here is giving me some ideas... hmmm
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
I'm also a medstudent. But in the Netherlands it isn't that much work at all, I still have lots of time to hang around and be bored :)
I want to do pathology (not because of CSI, but because my grandfather was a pathologist). But psychiatry interests me most, it's just such a shame you have to listen to people's problems all day if you want to be a psychiatrist... There are a lot of other things that interest me as well, but I'm not very good with patients, so anything to do with actual live patients is out of the question for me.
I'm an aussie, so my year starts in march, I've taken a gap year (to work, between highschool and uni), so I'm starting medschool in march 2010.
I'm really looking forward to starting, i'm from a very medical related family,and they all love it. I really feel it's what i'm meant to be doing, but like a few people said, while it's very fullfilling, it's a hell of a lot of work! But then anything worth doing is a lot of work!
yea, i will be doing step 2 CK straight after my written finals - whereas with step 1 i need to take a chunk of time out to revise just that before i attempt it, but that might not be till after august
how about you, how are you going about taking them? are they structured for you, so theres a specific time when you have to take it?
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
yes, step 1 is taken after 2nd year and one must pass in order to procede to 3rd year for clinical clerkships. step 2 is taken before december of 4th year when residency applications have been submitted starting september. people rely on the better scores for application purposes. if someone did great on step 1, they often take step 2 later in the year (after october but before january) so that step 2 scores are not used by residency programs in consideration for interviews. and, if someone didn't do well on step 1, most opt to take step 2 earlier starting in may so that their step 2 scores are back in time to make a difference in the selection process. i plan to take both cs and ck in july taking that month to study.
thats great that they look at it cumulatively, cos i know im not going to be able to do that greatly in my step 1, so im going to try really hard to get a good score on my step 2, im only going to do the CK of step 2 now, cos i think you can only do the CS of step 2 in the states.
thanks loads for the information, its been really helpful
and best of luck in all your exams, maybe one day we ll be saving lives together lol (if i can get through the MLEs) xx
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
im definitely considering coming to the states for specailist training, i think you get awesome exposure there and its pretty intense and i would love to, if i can get good enough scores on the usmles and get accepted on a desired programme then yes i will do so, but i know the competition is very high, so im keeping my options and mind open...
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
welcome
Hi IndieGeniusAsh
Welcome to AE Indian community.
Hey!
Hello
I'm a 4th yr., too.
hey :)
5th year....veterinarian! hehe
open door to madness
Hi! I'm in between pre-med
Another one
Hey, me too! im a 2nd year med student... Great to get to know u guys :-)
Hi!!
Med school student here, finishing up my 2nd year in June!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !"
Another
2nd year medical student (exams soon!!). >.<
Nice to meet you.
I'm not...
...but I was hoping it would be ok if I barged in here to ask you all a question?
How are you liking it? I'm a lost undergrad trying to decide what on earth I should do with my life...any feedback you have to offer would be fabulous!
Love it
It's an incredible amount of work but i can't imagine doing anything else! It's extremely interesting, and challenging, and fascinating (to me).
But like i said... a lot of work. So my advice would be, do it, if you know you want to be a doctor. The people i know who did it because they didn't know what to do didn't pass.
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
thanks
I am about to start undergrad with a focus on Pre-Med.
What you said about knowing it's what you want- making it possible to pass....that helps. thank you.
no problem
I was really just speaking from experience.
Because if it's not what you really want to do... you're probably not going to be willing to put in the hours and give up your social life.
And yet here we are :) the willing.
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
hey future doctors
hello, future doctors. just a lowly xray tech here. i am glad at least some of you mentioned being a doctor is your calling. no room for slackers when it comes to patient care. i love being an xray tech. school was challenging but it's so much better when you can practice what you've learned.
dara
I <3 X-rays
Seriously, I can get all happy when I see a pretty X-ray. I know I'm weird ;-D but I don't care.
And yes, I don't like slackers who become doctors just for the money or status that it brings. For me, it really is my calling and I don't understand others who just do it as something that 'seems like fun'...
agreed.
Although like i said in a previous post, those are the ones who usually fail. Which is a good thing. Not that I like seeing anyone fail, but they take up other studies just fine... just not these.
Speaking of... *goes back to studying*
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
well i will then admit that
well i will then admit that i get all happy when i see an obvious fracture. yeah, that sounds weird. i tell my students, "It sucks to be him but it looks cool to us." lol
a lot of people see us at our job, we make it look pretty effortless, and they all of a sudden want to be an xray tech. they only see the quick and easy side of it and think we are just monkeys who push buttons. kinda funny. radiography school was more challenging than my other degrees for sure.
keep up the good work, doctors. and remember to share the love with your friendly allied health techs. you never know, one of them may have a big old crush on you like i have on a certain ER doctor. hehe
I'll do you one better
I get all happy whenever I see an obvious fracture, EVEN on my own radiographs. I broke my toe about six months ago and I hobbled over to the display and analyzed my own photo... ;-D
And I'll keep it in mind to share the love. Who knows, a friendly allied tech might develop a crush on me! ;-P
ohhh
I'll try to keep that in mind! Just in case i meet someone interesting.
But what you said is true, and I think that most health jobs (okay so i translated that literally from what we call them in french but you get the gist of it) require a lot of work. I respect all of them :)
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
med student here
I'm almost done with my first year of medical school, and most days it's great. Does anyone know what type of residency they'd like to take already?
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
Residency?
As in what speciality would I like to do?
I want to be an Ortho Mc. Badass, like Callie Torres. Actually I've wanted to be an ortho since before she was on Grey's (ever since my first class taught by an orthopedic surgeon)...
The specialty?
I LOVE cardiovascular surgery and cardiovascular research, I just did an internship in the research wing of the hospital involving the development of biodegradable vascular grafts... it's awesome.
So yeah... I think i'll become a cardiovascular surgeon/researcher :-)
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
up-and-coming cardio goddess
Well...
It's pretty complex. But basically:
They're developing this graft that, as it degrades, is replaced by the hosts own cells and extracellular matrix. The vessel is re-created. So instead of having a foreign structure implanted forever (and the medication that goes along with it, for obvious reasons), they would have a brand new vessel. Another big advantage is that endothelium has antithrombotic proprieties, so it's a natural protection for thromboemboli etc, which happen still too often with stents, dacron etc...
I wrote a report about it (actually i'm doing a Powerpoint presentation for next thursday's exam... yikes!) and so far the results of studies on rats and pigs are really promising. It would be primarily for coronary arteries and such, not big ones (re-creating a human abdominal aorta from scratch has yet to be seen...)
That's about it :) But i love it!!!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
A-ha
I get it. Pretty brilliant, actually!
I like my women like I like my poetry: strong, beautiful and rhythmic
:)
I think so too. The doctor conducting this research group is a genius. But let's not forget his whole team!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
cardiovascular stuff
we're doing a module on the CV system right now and we got to do open-heart surgery on pigs earlier this week and after doing open-chested cardiac massage on the pig I thought, "what a cool specialty this must be..." but ah, what a long residency! I don't think I'm cut out for cardiothoracic surgery anyway, but the microvascular stuff is definitely the future....good luck!
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
Thanks
I hope it goes well :) so far it is.
What specialty would you do then?
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
genetics
I want to do stuff with genetics and fertility so I hope to take a residency in OB/GYN and then would love a genetics fellowship, or maybe reproductive endocrinology...all of the subspecialties of obstetrics and gynecology have my interest right now I guess.
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
cool!
Genetics are great, as well as all obstetrics and gynecology subspecialties, I wish you the best of luck!
"Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité ?
Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici ! trop tard ! jamais peut-être !
Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,
Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais !" Baudelaire
I'm still in undergrad but
med student
Hey there :)
4th year med student here. Currently on my clerkship/junior internship. :)
The biodegradeable vascular grafts mentioned above are fascinating. I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon or a cardiologist once upon a time. lol I'm still leaning towards internal med for my residency butI haven't decided on what I'll pursue afterwards.
hey!
3rd year med student here! :)
I'm also leaning towards internal med :) but well, there's still time to change my mind but right now, I love that option
Once a medical student......
I wonder...how would you
I wonder...how would you categorize those crazy MD-PhD's then, who do both... :)
that's crazy how much schooling you did!
everything I love, get back from me now/everyone I love, I need you now...
Haha, good point. Those
Haha, good point. Those MD/PhDs. Well, they can fall into either category, if you look at them carefully.
That's why I'm old! :D I was doing (sort of) research as an MD, but felt I was doing lousy "MD-science" (not to say there aren't any great MD scientists), so was compelled to do a PhD. It took only 3 years to get it all done, because I did it in Britain. It's a good deal.
yay medics :D
nice to see fellow medics on here, i have to choose F1 specialties this summer and i dont know what to choose :S i know i want to do medicine and not surgery, and reading through some of the posts here is giving me some ideas... hmmm
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
3rd year
I'm also a medstudent. But in the Netherlands it isn't that much work at all, I still have lots of time to hang around and be bored :)
I want to do pathology (not because of CSI, but because my grandfather was a pathologist). But psychiatry interests me most, it's just such a shame you have to listen to people's problems all day if you want to be a psychiatrist... There are a lot of other things that interest me as well, but I'm not very good with patients, so anything to do with actual live patients is out of the question for me.
OH wow, look at all these
OH wow, look at all these med students!
I'm an aussie, so my year starts in march, I've taken a gap year (to work, between highschool and uni), so I'm starting medschool in march 2010.
I'm really looking forward to starting, i'm from a very medical related family,and they all love it. I really feel it's what i'm meant to be doing, but like a few people said, while it's very fullfilling, it's a hell of a lot of work! But then anything worth doing is a lot of work!
are there any australian med students here?
I'm interested in forensic
usmle?
the usmle step 2? cos im thinking of taking that too- but ive not done step 1 yet as its been a long time since ive done biochemistry and all that...
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
yes, usmle. step 1 is no
usmle
yea, i will be doing step 2 CK straight after my written finals - whereas with step 1 i need to take a chunk of time out to revise just that before i attempt it, but that might not be till after august
how about you, how are you going about taking them? are they structured for you, so theres a specific time when you have to take it?
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
yes, step 1 is taken after
oh interesting
thats great that they look at it cumulatively, cos i know im not going to be able to do that greatly in my step 1, so im going to try really hard to get a good score on my step 2, im only going to do the CK of step 2 now, cos i think you can only do the CS of step 2 in the states.
thanks loads for the information, its been really helpful
and best of luck in all your exams, maybe one day we ll be saving lives together lol (if i can get through the MLEs) xx
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
will you come to the states
i want to but...
im definitely considering coming to the states for specailist training, i think you get awesome exposure there and its pretty intense and i would love to, if i can get good enough scores on the usmles and get accepted on a desired programme then yes i will do so, but i know the competition is very high, so im keeping my options and mind open...
~to cure rarely, to relieve often, but to console, always...~
yay for med students I
yay for med students
I have exams coming up so I should get back to it...
Anyone here insterested in OBs?
hi every1