Scope is an award-winning medical blog produced by a team of writers at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Dear Future Med Students, Congratulations on your acceptance to medical school! Wherever you’re starting this fall, know that you’re joining a “cult” of health care professionals and health care professionals-to-be. No matter how little you know, you’ll be asked for medical advice. And the more you learn, the less likely you’ll be able to sit …Read More
Like many of my classmates, I took the last year off from medical school. Some of us enrolled in different graduate programs to pursue a dual degree while others did a research year. The trend is becoming more common – the proportion of students who take more than four years to graduate and the number …Read More
Somehow, time has passed, and this is my last entry on Stanford Medicine Unplugged. It feels like just months ago that my classmates and I arrived on campus, only to pack our bags immediately and head off into the woods for our orientation camping trip. I remember seeing a baby bear, followed closely by its …Read More
Steven Zhang on
They say to avoid going to the hospital during July, which is when the newly branded doctors start working after receiving their medical degrees a mere handful of weeks earlier. Whether that urban legend is true or not, it’s still a frightening notion to think that that my classmates and I will be branded with …Read More
As our elected officials consider to weigh the future of our nation’s health care, I thought I would take the opportunity to share a few vignettes of patients that I’ve encountered this year who exemplify the way that access to health care can make the difference between life and death. The undocumented immigrant with seizures …Read More
Every time I walk into a bookstore, I pass Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and am reminded of a specific anecdote he shared. Kalanithi, MD, was a seventh-year neurosurgery resident and his lung cancer had metastasized – a process which was only being controlled by a new drug his oncologist had decided to try. …Read More
At long last, the day of graduation — not only from medical school but from a lifetime of schooling — is within reach. In less than a month, my classmates and I will start the day as students and end the day with two letters following our name, welcoming us into the medical profession. We’ll …Read More
This quarter, during the block of our Human Health and Disease course dedicated to learning about the pulmonary system, I conducted one of the scariest “academic experiments” of my life: I stopped going to class. What did she do with all that free time? one might be wondering. Instead of spending hours every week watching …Read More
For the first two years of medical school, everything was all about us. Day one was our white coat ceremony. Our family and friends traveled from near and far to come celebrate our achievements; the school gifted us stethoscopes and white coats to mark the beginning of our journeys. We had already accomplished amazing feats …Read More
In any educational environment, there’s a set of buzzwords that create a common vocabulary. Medical students constantly hear about “bench-to-bedside research,” “evidence-based medicine,” and “compassionate care.” Meanwhile, business school students can’t stop talking about “aligning objectives,” “disruptive innovation,” and of course, “synergy.” One of the most frequently used phrases in both schools is “big data.” …Read More
