Hello friends. It’s been quite a long time since we’ve communicated. Life has been busy – nearly finishing family medicine residency, getting engaged, planning a wedding, COVID cancelling that wedding, planning another wedding, applying to fellowship. Lots to reflect upon on the last few years.
Just wanted to give you a heads up that I’m trying to consolidate my online presence, and will post here, but my HQ will be at www.roheet.com.
Thanks!
Hey Medblr,
As AMCAS/AACOMAS season ramps up, I just wanted to remind you of a great resource for premeds who are applying to medical school!
It’s called Lean On, and it’s essentially a rocket-powered medical school admissions tool that I’m hoping more premeds take advantage of!
Lean On uses your individualized data and runs it through a proprietary algorithmic engine, which analyzes it across 50 different dimensions of comparison to find your ideal medical school student adviser. It’s essentially a successful future version of yourself telling you how to get where you want to be! And it’s been working; 95% of folks who use Lean On get into med school!
For a small fee that goes towards fighting medical student debt, you get your personal statement, activities descriptions, or secondary application reviewed and edited by a medical student just like you. If you need advice on interviews, there is help for that too!
I started Lean On after experiencing generic advice from my premed counselors and being actively discouraged from applying! I thought that was wrong and, after seeing how all my medical school classmates broke the typical premed mold, I knew there could be something better. Thus, Lean On.
I hope you check it out! www.leanonadmit.com
Spring time is here. While for most folks that means getting outside, for premeds, that means getting their medical school application together. I remember when I was applying, the sheer stress of cobbling together all the disparate pieces of information - let alone writing a good personal statement, nailing some awesome letters of recommendation, and strategizing properly - was daunting. It weighed heavy.
There are a ton of awesome resources online to help with medical school admissions. A lot of Medblr bloggers are also on top of doling good advice. For those of you applying right now, my general rules of thumb are :
1) Stay away from the often emotionally toxic land of SDN. All it gave me was anxiety. This is not a good time to hang out with your premed friends. And if there are rumors about applications and medical schools, don’t listen to them. Go straight to AAMC or the AMCAS website and figure it out for yourself firsthand.
2) Ask everyone to proof read your personal statement. And, on top of that, CARE about your personal statement. It is what makes you shine as a person and differentiates your application. Just because you have a 4.0 GPA and a stellar MCAT score does not make you a worthwhile candidate, especially with holistic admissions processes that medical schools are employing.
3) Don’t be afraid to get help. It’s why I started LeanOn, the intelligent admissions service that pairs you up with a medical student just like you using 50 different data points to optimize your mentorship experience. Check it out. 100% of users would recommend it to a friend, and you might too.
4) Take a step back. In the rush of organizing your documents, it’s important to understand why you’re doing this. After all, medical school is no joke. Your motivation should tie everything together and is ultimately what makes you compelling as an applicant.
I know I haven’t been blogging a lot lately (thanks residency), but I’m still around lurking in the medblr scene. Feel free to message me at any point with questions!
The volume of modern medical knowledge is staggering and has soared at a seemingly logarithmic pace over the decades. As a developing primary care physician, I am, ideally, expected to understand and manage 80% of it.
This is undeniably daunting. I often find myself at a loss of words for my patients’ more nuanced questions, often falling back on basic pathophysiology, with broad explanations of management, to aid our mutual understanding of a condition. Each time, however, I am dizzied by the depths of knowledge I cannot fathom.
And I share this with my patients. The amount of times I have answered, “I don’t know.” seems borderline silly. A doctor who does not know seems culturally counter-intuitive and even damaging to ones image. Yet, my patients seem to welcome that honesty and vulnerability. It re-frames the appointment as a shared journey, a practice, of health and health care, instead of a mysterious one-stop shop for answers. Finding the knowledge may be as simple as deferring to my attending physician or as involved as scouring the latest AAFP, NEJM, Dynamed, or UpToDate on the bedside computer together.
My patients seem to appreciate this, as they thank me for my time and return to see me and my team. Perhaps it humanizes the appointment, removes the doctor from the academic pedestal, and engages them more in their health than they otherwise would have been. I anticipate that with the upcoming years, the frequency with which I say, “I don’t know.” will diminish. Until then, however, I’ll continue answering, “I don’t know, but let’s find out.”
(originally posted on roheet.com)