MedHopeful.com

It’s been a great four and a half years blogging here at MedHopeful.

However, as my final year of medical school comes to a close this spring, I feel it is time for me to move on.

As I made my way through undergrad and medical school, I shared a lot of thoughts regarding scholarships, undergrad and medical school. As I enter into a new phase of my life, the truth is these topics aren’t much on my mind anymore, and I don’t have much to add.

I will continue to leave MedHopeful up as a resource for students and applicants to use, but I don’t plan on updating, and as other areas in my life start to fill up, I likely won’t be as active in replying to comments anymore. Of course, this was inevitable.

For those of you interested in following along as I start a new phase in my life, I will be writing on my new personal blog over at www.joshualiu.ca. I will be sharing my thoughts as I work towards understanding how we can better leverage technology to solve some of the greatest problems in health care.

Thanks again for all your support over the years!

2012 was an interesting year. I completed my first year of doing clinical work full time as a clerk, and am in the midset of preparing for residency (interviews are in late January and early February).

As I look back, on not just this year but the past decade, I realized that I am still on my journey of “finding myself”. As I get smarter, more skilled and more experienced, I am getting closer to figuring out what I really want out of life. Yet in doing so, the more I realize how much more I need to learn and develop in order to get there.

I’ve realized that what I’m trying to achieve is not actually a goal, but rather, a way of life.

Yes, there are milestones I want to achieve (for example, receiving my M.D. this coming spring). However, I use the word milestone intentionally – for me, becoming a physician is not the end goal, but an important part of my path to something much greater. What will that be? I can’t say for certain, but as I said, I’m slowly getting closer to what that might be.

While I don’t know where I end up, I do believe there are 3 key things (more specifically, habits and attitudes) I want to work on to get there.

1. Read more

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I often receive emails asking me very vague questions, such as “how do I stand out on my medical school application?” or “I did well in high school, but I’m having so much trouble in university now – what to I do?” The problem with these types of questions is that there is no good answer for them; honestly, there is no step by step formula for success.

Instead, I think a better approach is to figure out what qualities or habits one should adopt in order to be successful. This is especially important for young people in high school and postsecondary who are soon to enter the working world, but are still lost about their interests, skills and need to build their capacity.

Through my personal experiences, I have come across a remarkable number of outstanding individuals in a variety of sectors, including science, medicine, business and community service, among others. In reflecting on these individuals, I have come to realize there are 6 qualities they all tend to share in common.

1. Resourceful

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As I am in the midst of writing many essays for my residency applications, I am also thinking ahead to the inevitable interview stage. I started to reflect on my experiences, the questions I was asked, and really the most important topic – what value do interviews contribute, why should we use them, and therefore, how should we use them?

Actions speak louder than words

Before I dive further into interviews, I want to point out why I think someone’s resume should be the most important part of the application process for anything. Really, it comes down to one simple reason:

Past behaviour is most predictive of future behaviour.

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I have now spent the last 20 years of my life in the formal education system. This includes all kinds of schooling: private school, public school, a self-directed learning high school, undergraduate studies, and most recently, professional school. I have 1 year left to go in medical school, but if you count residency as a formal education, then I actually have at least another 3 years to go (assuming I do Family Medicine residency, which is the plan).

Every student at some point in his or her life comes across a school subject they hate and asks:

Why do I have to learn this? I'm never going to use this again.

Usually parents and teachers say something like “you might not understand now, but someday you'll see why it's important”. Sometimes this is actually true. But other times, chances are your parents and teachers are thinking the same thing you are.

So why are there all these different subjects that often don't seem to really matter?

The main theory that comes to mind is to expose students to a variety of subjects. How do you know what subjects would interest you until you try them? It's like trying new food – you're missing out on a ton of great stuff if you never try anything new.

I think this concept is sound on a theoretical level. And so it makes sense that not every student is going to like every subject out there. You might try Science and hate it, and never want to do it again. On the other hand, you might try Science, love it, and become a scientist.

Both outcomes are useful: if you like the subject, you are closer to finding a career or interest; if you don't like it, well at least you can rule stuff out.

My problem with this theory

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I have written a lot about medical school, but mostly about getting in and some of my experience as a “preclerk” – the primarily classroom based learning I did in my first two years of medical school.

Now that I am in my 4th and final year, I have over a year of clinical experience under my belt. Besides two weeks off for winter break, I have spent the last 12 months straight working in hospitals and clinics, rotating through every single service imaginable. One week I would be suturing lacerations in the emergency room, and the next I could be delivering a baby. I am a firm believer that a medical student’s first clinical year presents the steepest learning curve in all of medical training.

However, I didn’t write much about clerkship for a few reasons.

The first is that it was my busiest year ever, and that meant I always found an excuse not to write: too tired, too busy, too stressed, etc. Fortunately, 4th year is full of elective rotations, and my schedule is much improved. I don’t have any excuse for not writing unless I get lazy. Hopefully that doesn’t happen (look, this is the first time I would have blogged two days in a row in forever – when was the last time that happened?).

The second is that I was always worried about what I would be allowed to write from clerkship. Given that I am seeing patients and coworkers day in and day out, I was scared to write something that would identify another person. It doesn’t help that I write openly as myself – anyone who has come into contact with me on service might think I am writing about them. Now that I have completed my core rotations, I have a bit more freedom to write, but of course I will be safe and cognizant of privacy.

The third is that I just wasn’t experienced enough to write about clerkship. It has taken me the full year to really realize the value of clerkship and what it takes to be a great clerk. Chances are, what you think might make a good clerk probably is far from the truth – I know that was true for myself and my peers (hint: if you think the clerk who studies the most impresses the most, think again). It takes experiencing something as intense as clerkship to really realize what is expected of you and what you should really expect of yourself.

Now that I have this experience, I feel ready to freely share my thoughts on what it means to be a great clinical clerk. For those of you who have recently started or will soon be starting clerkship, I hope there are some gems in this article for you. For those of you still not yet in medical school but hope to one day, I hope this gives you a bit of insight into what being a medical student is like and what attitudes and skill would be useful to adopt in your life going forward.

Create value

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I was recently consulted through EssaySensei to help a high school student with her application for a prestigious undergraduate program. Her mother saw the progress we had made since her first draft and was really impressed:

Hi Josh, I love this essay. It turned out so good. I couldn't be happier. Thank you thank you! Do you have any tricks my younger daughter could learn?

Residency applications

As I write this blog post, I am in the midst of completing my own applications for residency programs. Residency is the next step after medical school and involves additional training to become a specific type of doctor. For example, a family physician requires two extra years of residency training and a general surgeon requires six.

Similar to the process of applying to medical school, we need to write personal statements, C.V.s, and obtain reference letters from physicians and supervisors who have worked with us. And like medical school, we again have to apply to residency programs at various universities. This means that we need to tailor parts of our application to the different schools we are applying to. Suffice to say, it is a lot of work and brings back memories of applying to medical school. (Subtext: you will be jumping through hoops for the rest of your life.)

Over the last week, I have been working hard to write my personal statement. I need to write a convincing letter about why I want to pursue Family Medicine, how my experiences prepare me for residency, and why I am a good fit for each of these universities.

Fortunately, I developed my theme and structure relatively quickly, and I did not have too much trouble writing my first draft. I don't want to make essay writing sound easy, because it's not. But at the same time, it's not a mountain for me. Clearly, there must be skills or knowledge I could impart to help others with the essay writing process.

So what tips could I provide to this mother's daughter?

There is no substitute for experience

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This year, McMaster medical school has done something interesting with CASPer. They have provided this year’s applicants with 4 sample CASPer videos with 3 questions each. They also state that 2 of the 4 videos will be used in the actual CASPer – however, they make no mention of whether the questions will also be re-used.

Why are they doing this? I’m not really sure, and given their propensity for testing new models and concepts, I would imagine this is also for testing purposes – I see no other reason to provide applicants with advanced knowledge unless they were trying to see whether advanced preparation affects applicant scores or something like that. Who knows?

In any case, I thought these cases were interesting. While I’m not going to write out my own answers (for obvious reasons – you should be trying yourself!), I do want to share some random thoughts that hopefully will help some of you think about the scenario in different ways. Hopefully, seeing some different perspectives on the same scenario will help you when approaching new situations in the actual CASPer.

Video 1: Affirmative Action

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“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn

When I was in undergrad, I had 5 good friends who also wanted to go into medical school. All 6 of us eventually got into medical school. I didn’t know any of them before I started undergrad. They were all people that I randomly met somewhere in undergrad, most of them were in my classes. Still, what are the chances?

Of course, that’s not the whole story. All 6 of us were well aware of our shared goal of getting into medical school. But we didn’t act as rivals. We didn’t see each other as competition. Instead, we kept each other up to date on medical school news and deadlines. We discussed our trials and tribulations with the MCAT. We helped each other with essays and interviews. We worked together towards our own individual but identical goals.

The fact that we all go into medical school is honestly a statistical anomaly. It was by chance that I met these 5 people. But what wasn’t chance was that we chose to motivate, encourage and support each other towards our shared goal. It wasn’t chance that we chose to remain in close contact. And I am sure all of us would agree that these relationships, in some way or another, helped us towards our goal of getting into medical school.

You are the product of the people you surround yourself with

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Over the last few weeks, I have reviewed quite a few medical school admissions essays through my online consulting service EssaySensei. Without a doubt, it confirmed something I have believed all along: that there is no clear correlation between essay writing skills and quality of applicant.

I have seen both good and bad essays, and the quality of the essay did not necessarily reflect the resumes of the applicants. Some applicants have done absolutely amazing things, but have great difficulty marketing themselves on paper. My goal when it comes to reviewing essays is always to help applicants better understand what medical schools are looking for, and present the best and most relevant aspects of themselves.

All that being said, I continue to notice several key mistakes that applicants seem to make over and over when writing their essays. While it is just 3 days before OMSAS medical school applications are due, for those of you have not submitted yet (to be fair, I had not submitted by this time either!), hopefully you can learn from these mistakes and improve your essays.

1. Lacking an introduction

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