9 Essential Skills Medical Schools Don’t Teach and How to Overcome the Knowledge Deficit

Medical schools teach medical content well, but they miss the mark when it comes to teaching the practical side of medicine. Questions like How should I manage my income? What should I look for in a contract? or What happens when I’m sued? are left unanswered. Physicians generally learn these lessons on the job and make avoidable mistakes along the way.

The following are nine skills I wish I would have learned before leaving medical school.

Tips For A Great Shadowing Experience

Shadowing plays an important role in both the decision to become a physician and the application process. This is why optimizing the experience is so important. The following is a list of “do’s and dont’s” of shadowing.

The Secret Perks of Night Shifts

For those of us who dread night shifts, find them disruptive, and resent the people who schedule us—we need to learn from those who do it by choice. Medicine is a 24/7 industry that we signed up for. By adopting the philosophy of night workers, we can change our perspective and maybe enjoy our night experiences a little more.

Is This the Perfect Time to Try Locum Tenens?

As facilities restructure to satisfy the new normal, positions are opening up. And the more I’m contacted by recruiters trying to fill those positions, the more I see just how many and how varied those positions are.

With all of this opportunity, one can’t help but ask oneself: Is this a good time to try something new? 

How I Picked A Medical Specialty

In this article Dr. David Beran gives helpful advise to medical students for choosing which type of residency to pursue. The medical specialty decision is stressful—by thinking of the specialties in big buckets and asking major questions, you can narrow down your list…

6 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Quitting Your Job in Healthcare

More than ever, it’s important to ask yourself the right questions before making the decision to quit. Here are six questions to help put that decision in perspective.

Why This Physician Isn’t Burned Out

I am an emergency physician.

I provide care to abusive patients via a clunky EMR. I work nights, weekends and holidays. Because of unnecessary bureaucratic tasks, simple aspects of my job are cumbersome and take longer than they should. 

And I am not burned out…

What Is A “Rock Star” Doctor?

Many physicians possess some of these characteristics, but excellent physicians possess them all. Seamlessly integrating them into an excellent patient care experience is what makes you a rock star.

How To Explore A New Job Market As An Emergency Physician

Working as an attending means a greater degree of responsibility than working as a resident. You are more likely to have hospital or system-level roles, be involved with committees or champion hospital initiatives.   Having a sense of the job market gives insight into the context of your job interest and enables you make the best possible decision when pursuing a job.

For the purposes of this post, I’ll presume you know nothing about an area—you’re moving to a new location and would like to size up a job market that is completely foreign to you. Any information you have by word-of-mouth will only help solidify what you gather by using the approach below.

Five Ways Medical Culture Harms the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Current medical culture has evolved over thousands of years. It dictates how we treat each other and ourselves. It’s an insidious culture of self-neglect, unspoken hierarchies, jousting, and undervalued humanity.

As physicians, we are expected to establish rapport and trust with our patients while enmeshed in medical culture. Our “values, norms, and practices” are to care for patients as we would our own family members. The success we’re striving for is to have best possible outcome for all of our patients.

But our goals and culture are antagonistic; good patient outcomes will occur despite medical culture, not because of it.

The following are just five ways medical culture undermines the efforts to establish a successful doctor-patient relationship.