Episode 000

An introduction to the Undifferentiated Medical Student podcast.

Selected Show Notes

120+ specialties that will be covered on this podcast can be found here: www.aamc.org/cim/specialty/exploreoptions/list/

TUMS Podcast on twitter: @iatroblast

Transcript of Episode 000

Hello and welcome to the first episode of the undifferentiated medical student podcast, a podcast about choosing a medical specialty and planning a career in medicine.  My name is Ian Drummond, and I am a 4th year medical student currently struggling to do both of these things. And so really, this podcast is about solving both of this problems for myself.

To do so, I decided I would talk to as many physicians as I could. However, I knew I wasn’t alone in my uncertainty about my career, having seen many of my classmates, both above and below me struggle in the same way so I decided to record these conversations and to make this podcast as a way of scaling the mentorship I hoped receive from these physicians (mentorship that is sorely lacking in medical school in my opinion) so that any medical student who cared to listen, could. As a fly on the wall.

And these interviewers are what will follow this introductory episode 000.

But in this episode I would like to do 3 things. First, I would like to tell you more about the format of and what you can expect from this podcast in the months to come. Second, I would like to tell you a little bit more about this podcast’s reason for being, part of which I just shared with you. And third, I would like to tell you a little bit of my own story and who I am.

That said, to find out more about this podcast, you can also go to UndifferentiatedMedicalStudent.com, follow me on Twitter where my handle is @iatroblast, or you can email me at Ian at UndifferentiatedMedicalStudent com.

So about the format of this podcast and what to expect.

As I mentioned, each episode of this podcast, which will air biweekly, will take the form of an interview in which I probe a practicing physician with 3 sets of questions all aimed at discovering how best to go about choosing a medical specialty and planning a career in medicine. In fact, I surveyed 20 of my 3rd and 4th year classmates to compile the questions that you will hear in these interviews and from the 100s of questions I received, I noticed that the questions that my classmates would have asked these physicians usually fell into one of three categories: first, questions about the details of their specialty, second, questions about how they determined this specialty was right for them, and third, questions about long-term career planning irrespective of the specialty they went into. And these 3 categories of questions comprise Parts 1, 2, and 3 of each interview, which I will elaborate on now.

So Part 1: Question about the details of their specialty. After a short introduction, I ask my physician guests to give us the more objective information about their specialty.  I begin the discussion by reading a description of the specialty in question from the Careers In Medicine website hosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges (a website I encourage all med students go check whether or not you listen to this podcast; but definitely if you listen to this podcast because I will reference it often. The website I’m talking about can be found at https://www.aamc.org/cim/specialty/exploreoptions/list/).  I let the guests opine about this description, and then ask them to respond to at least the following 5 questions:

1. What does your typical weekly routine look like, what are a typical series of patients you would see and what are a typical set of outcomes for these patients.
2.  What is most exciting about your specialty, and what is most?
3. What is one thing you wish you had known about your specialty that you only recognized in hindsight?
4. How does the practice of your specialty change based on setting: for example, in an inpatient vs. an outpatient setting; in an academic vs. a private setting; in a urban vs. a rural setting; and in a military vs. a civilian setting
5. Lastly, What are the biggest challenges facing your specialty, and how do you predict your specialty will change in next 10 to 20 years.

I end this section by asking the guests for any resources that they would recommend med students use to better inform themselves about their specialty.

Part 2: Questions about how they determine their specialty was right for them. In the second part of the interview, I then ask the physicians to share the story of how they decide this specialty was a good fit for them, asking them to recount the struggles they faced in coming to a decision, the insights they had that helped them narrow down their choices, and then the ah-HA moment when it all made sense to them.  Questions in this section include:

1. What factors ended up weighing most heavily in your decision, and why?
2. Was there an algorithm or decision-tree that you ended you following, and is there one you would recommend to med students facing this decision today?
3. Then I ask what I have dubbed The 3rd-year Question about a scenario that I found myself in, that is, “If you were a 3rd year medical student, undecided about choice of specialty with limited time remaining before residency applications were to be submitted, what do you think would be the fasted, highest-yield route to making a decision?”

I end Part 2 again by asking about resources that would help med students work through this goodness of fit process. Spoiler alert: almost every physician I interview mentions finding a mentor as one of the best things you can do to aid in this process. So if you stopped listening to this podcast right now, and went out and found yourself a mentor today, your time would be well spent. However, if you don’t know how you might go about doing that, the physicians interviewed on this show give some great tips about finding a mentor.

Part 3: questions about long-term career planning. In the last part of the interview, I ask the guest to give us long-term career advice, irrespective of the medical specialty one might enter.  I begin by asking, if you could go back and do it all again, what would you do differently, and what would you do the same?  Because there’s a little bit of a survivorship bias in the population of physicians who agree to be interview on this show, which makes them prone to saying that they would change little about their careers, you will then hear me press them with the following questions: What mistakes have you seen other physicians make in their careers? And What is one thing your are struggling with today, what are you doing to remedy it, and what would you recommend to someone in medical school do right now to avoid this problem altogether? Some of the best advice gets dropped in this last part of the interview. I end Part 3 by asking “what is one book, medical or nonmedical, that you think every person pursuing a career in medicine should read?”

And that’s it.

So that is what you can expect from each episode, and again I will be publishing 2 interviews per week; although, this publishing schedule may change depending on quickly I can find and interview new doctors.

So now a little bit more on this podcast’s reason for being and what it is really about. However, first I would like to start with what this podcast is not about. It is not the pre-clinical years and adjusting to life in medical school.  Likewise, this podcast is not about 4th year, getting into residency, or strategies for doing so.  What this podcast is about is filling the knowledge gaps you might have about all the specialties available to us, addressing the tasking of committing to a medical specialty, if only in your own head, and then getting the wheels turning in developing your long term career goals before you’re swept too far along in the rat race to residency. The target audience of this podcast is 3 rd year medical students, however I would love it if 2nd and 1st years wanted to listen in too, and I truly believe these years will also find the content of these interviews informative.

That said, if you are a 1st or 2nd year, you may hear some clinical jargon that will make you raise an eyebrow.

The reason I say 3rd years are the target audience is because 3rd year is when you really start feeling the pressure to pick a specialty, and to pick it quickly, because 3rd is when you discover the fallacy of 3 rd year. That is, the fallacy that 3rd year is when you as a medical student get to explore all the specialties that are out there before having to choose one. And this is just not true, for at least two reasons. First, there are too many specialties to see all of them in one year, and second, you don’t even get to functionally finish 3rd year before you have to start making career-defining decisions about 4th year and residency, especially if you’re considering one of the more competitive specialties or one with an early match because last minute planning to entering these specialties will hurt you. But if you’re like me, and many other medical students, you didn’t truly internalize this because you were all too willing to waiting until after Step 1 and to emerge on the other side as 3rd year to settle all the uncertainties you had about your career.

So, what I mean is, 3rd year is when you start having motility issues and really getting motivated to figure out your career. So it was the 3 rd year and my former 3rd year self whom I had in mind when making this podcast.

With that context in mind, as mentioned, this podcast’s reasons for being are as follows:

Reason 1: To fill in the knowledge gaps a 3 rd year might have about the specialties he won’t get a to see during 3 rd year. To this end, it is my goal to interview at least one physician from each of the 120-plus specialties and sub-specialties listed on the AAMC’s Careers in Medicine website.
Reason 2: With objective information about each specialty available, to help this nominal 3 rd year work through the personal calculus of deciding which specialty is the best fit for him, and it is my hope that the stories shared by the physicians interviewed about the making of their own decisions will aid in this process.
Reason 3: To provide advice about long-term career planning irrespective of medical specialty as derived from lessons these physicians learned the hard way. And this is advice any medical student could benefit from.

So now for a little bit of my story and who I am.

My name is Ian, hi. I am a 4th year medical student. More accurately, I am a raising 4 th year medical student. I finished my 3 rd year of medical school in June of 2016 and decided to take a gap year before the start of my 4th year. The reasons for my gap year are at least two fold. The first reason is that I have always wanted to see how you start a business, and so when I was offered an internship at a medical device startup that dabbles in ureteral stents, I jumped at the opportunity, so that’s what I am currently doing when I’m not podcasting. And the second reason is that I still don’t know what kind of doctor I want to be when I grow up; and because I have personally become obsessed with podcasts over the last couple of years because they offer target information on what whatever you happen to be interested in, they are on-demand and you can listen to them whenever you want, you can double task and listen to them while you’re doing something else like walking to class, and they’re free. And I thought to myself, well hell, I’ve got a personal problem that I would like to solve, I know other people are having the same problem, and this thing called a podcast that my friends can’t get me to shut up about seems like the perfect way for a multitasking broke medical student to tackle it. And so The Undifferentiated Medical Student was born.

And there you have it, Episode 000.

I also have to give a disclaimer, so here it goes.

Any opinions that I express on this podcast are my own and are not that of any institution with which I may be affiliate. Likewise, the opinions expressed by the physician guests on this podcast are their own, are not mine, and are not that of any institution with which they might be affiliated. If considering making any decisions about your own career based on what you have heard on this podcast, you should consult with the appropriate professional first.

Again, for more information, you can go to UndifferentiatedMedicalStudent.com, follow me on twitter where my handle is @iatroblast, or email me at Ian at UndifferentiatedMedicalStudent com

If you find yourself enjoying the show, please click or tap subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening in on, leave a review for the show in iTunes, and hopefully give it a 5 star rating.

Lastly, I really would love to hear from listeners, so if there’s something on your mind, I would encourage you to shoot me an email at Ian at UndifferentiatedMedicalStudent com

And with that, I really hope this podcast helps you on your journey from an undifferentiated medical student to the type of physician you want to be.