Keeping a journal is still cool!
Face it, by the time you make it through your third year of rotations, your mind is swimming with great memories and influential patients all across your rotations. Not to mention, you still have one more year of rotations to go! Whether you’re applying for residency during your fourth year or have spare time, you are going to want to be able to recall all of those great moments that have shaped your medical training experience and change how you see and practice medicine now until forever. The problem is trying to recall such vivid details and emotions can sometimes be difficult when we have gone through a whirlwind of stress from board examinations to those anxious nights of waiting for scores and chaotic schedules. What to do? If you are just starting your clinical rotations, you are in luck. If you are a little further into your rotations, you can still utilize this easy method to be able to record these memories.
After each of your rotations or if you have time after the event itself, start a word document with the rotation name and pertinent details of the encounter. Was it an interesting patient diagnosis that tested your critical thinking abilities? Was it the patient themselves that taught you something about the practice of medicine? What thoughts were running through your mind and what emotions were you feeling? This becomes useful when you plan to write personal statements or even read through prior to interviews in case you wanted to mention some of these key moments during your medical training. What I have found too is that for students who are still unsure of what specialty to apply to, this document can guide them towards those areas that most influenced the student and which rotations were not as salient.
Throughout each of my third year rotations, I have made headings in a Word document of the rotation and bullet points of events that happened that have allowed me to become a better student physician. For example, during my internal medicine rotation, there was one particular patient that taught me about the social risk factors that bring patients to emergency rooms. This prompted me to look into the available resources in my community and program events that would benefit those organizations. Because I wrote out my thoughts and emotions, whenever I read through the description, I can recall the thoughts I had at the time making the entire process of recall simple.
During my clinical rotations, I always kept in mind what I might need to do in the future in terms of training. This includes, but is not limited to, interviews, writing detailed accounts of my experiences, and just keeping in mind those that have made me who I am today. By doing so, I have been able to develop these mini-strategies to benefit me in the future. I have other strategies I developed throughout my third year, so stay tuned for more of those! What things have you developed throughout your medical training that have helped make you successful?
Written by: Billy Zhang
Billy is a third year medical student with the University of Medicine and Health Sciences (UMHS), St. Kitts. He is excited to share his experiences and thoughts with medical students of all levels. Whether you are just starting your clinical rotations or nearing the end, he hopes he is able to give some useful advice on your journey. Keep up with him through his blog, https://nearlytheremd.wordpress.com/.