Headline Stories
Who is Going To Feed Us Now?
John Biebelhausen, M’11 (MD/MBA)
You have heard it before: “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” Now, more than ever, this rings true throughout the halls of the nation’s medical schools and teaching hospitals. If there was any doubt of the recent shift away from hand-holding between industry and academic medical institutions, then the recent Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) report on industry funding of medical education sets things straight like an over-protective father on prom night.
The Price of Beauty
Kate Turk , M'11
In his book, Better, Atul Gawande recounts the moment he was offered his first job as a fully licensed physician after years of grueling preparation. The head of the department asked him what he wanted to be paid. Gawande didn’t know how much would be reasonable, let alone how much he wanted. It’s a problem we all face in medicine, though perhaps in a more subtle way, when we pick our specialty. We are not supposed to be "in this for the money," but let’s face it: most of us hope our dream specialty--the thing that gets us out of bed in the morning, ready to heal the sick and comfort the dying--also has a nice paycheck and doesn’t require excessive amounts of overtime to boot. Why not?
Big Picture
Jon Bass, M'11
Notes from a fetal MD
Jacob Berman, M'10
To be a Physical Diagnosis II student is to negotiate a strange, intermediate stage of doctor-ly development. Gone are the youthful days of Patient Interviewing, in which first-year medical students chat with patients, express compassion, and vaguely explore the rudiments of a medical history. Still ahead are the days of clinical integration, where diagnostic reasoning and scientific knowledge empower clinicians to render medical services to their patients.