Category: Med School Basics

“Health care students can be taught from the beginning of their careers that they have as much responsibility for their own sanity and physical well-being as they do for those qualities in the lives of their patients.”
– Donald A. Block, MD

Med School Sucess Basics is a brief overview and introduction to Whole MED Student’s guiding  principles.

We encourage you to spend a few minutes every day 15-30 minutes focusing on your health and well-being.  It can make a significant difference.

Our primary resources included in this App our our Daily Power Up Your Health Tips (which includes a podcast) and our 7 Day Accelerate Your Health Challenge.

We sincerely hope you’ll take advantage of these seemingly simple but powerful tools. They are designed to help empower you to take charge of your health and well-being.  While they may seem simple, they are equally potent-if you use them.  The most important thing we can help you to do is to create a perspective that will support you during your trials and tribulations. It’s no easy task, but it is possible.

And this is your first step to what we hope will be a rewarding career and a healthy life.

In this section we’re going to explore in this important section, the concerning data regarding med student health globally how to improve your chances of successfully survive medical school with your health, both physicial and emotional intact.  Our tools, information and other resources are designed to help protect you from the health impairing challenges that’s damaging the lives of a significant number of medical students around the globe.

As you may already know, medical school is no easy task.  It is demanding and unrelenting.  While we support a major overhaul of the culture and  manner in which students are trained, we realistically acknowledge that transformation is not going to happen overnite.

Our passionate and unyielding mission is to help you to the best of our ability to get thru as unscathed as possible.  Your health is our future.

This section contains and introduction to the useful information, tools, techniques and resources that can make a difference in your ability to navigate through the challenges, with less stress, anxiety, exhaustion.

While you were well prepared academically, you were not properly advised emotionally and physically as to how to effectively and efficiently meet the obstacles before you.

We know your health is as important as that of your patients.

And that you are not alone.  Far too many students are suffering in deep isolation and silence.  We’re here to make a difference in your life and your classmates.  So let’s begin by taking a look at medical school’s unique challenges.

Medical School’S Unique Challenges

For ages, medicine has been held as an honorable and noble profession. Medical students begin their education with a sense of excitement, enthusiasm, altruism, idealism and optimism.

Medical education holds a grim reality within the health care industry – a continuum of mental and physical health and emotional distress that begins in medical school.

Medical school marks one of the most pivotal periods in the life of a physician. Not only are the four or more rigorous years a time of immense learning and professional growth, but they are also a stage of great personal development.

The majority of medical students who matriculate directly out of college encounter in the new independent lifestyle of the medical student a wealth of decisions over which they previously had little control as an undergraduate—loan budgeting, dining options, living environment. Faced with academic demands and long hours unlike any they have ever before experienced, medical students are universally forced to decide what to keep in their overbooked schedules, and what to eliminate.

Tragically, the pursuit of a medical career exacts a life-altering toll on the student’s health and well-being, with a focus on technical proficiency and accumulation of information, with little to no consideration of the student’s individuality, and unique sensibilities.

Among medical students across the country, a belief exists that the best or the only way to survive and succeed amidst the intense academic pressure is to give up all other activities that compete with academics for time—even those activities of great personal importance.

Feeling as though your hands are tied whilst the pressure surmounts equate to detrimental emotions. No one wants their spirit to be shackled.

Since the 1960’s medical student abuse in the form of harassment and hostility, have been recognized as a problem in American medical schools. This important issue has remained ignored by many, despite these facts, medical school administrators (deans) continued to overlook and deny the existence of the culture of abuse in their institutions.

Medical Student Mental Health Statistics:

The statistics are alarming. Every day a medical student takes his or her life. Burn out is over 50%. Anxiety and depression have reached epidemic proportions.

Recent research suggests that medical education may actually impair students from maintaining humanistic qualities described in the profession’s oath, ultimately affecting negatively on the quality of future patient care. Physicians experiencing burnout make more accidents and have poorer patient outcomes.

A 2006 study indicated medical students entering training with a similar mental wellbeing profile as age-matched peers, but leave school with less empathy and humanitarianism than they entered.

Medical students are also more depressed and report more suicidal ideation than non-medical peers.
Other studies have shown that the documented decrease in empathy is associated with a decline in clinical performance and that the disparities in well-being are amplified in women and groups traditionally under-represented in medicine.

Among Medical Students: after accidents, suicide is the leading cause of death!                                                                                                                                                          More than 10 %globally report having entertained thoughts of suicide,                                                                                                                                              Depression 20-30%
Anxiety and burnout rates are greater than 50%

Residents experience 60-75 per cent and higher while practicing physicians experience the highest rates of suicide for any profession and 60-90% of physicians would not recommend the field to their children.

Burnout Among Residents:
• In resident studies showed an average rates of burnout as high as 41-90%
• The burnout levels increase quickly within the first few months of residency
• Interestingly, ACGME changes to work hour duties for residents have showed decreased burnout rates moderately but…
• In a study in published in 2005* noted:
• 13% fewer residents experienced high emotional exhaustion
• There was a trend toward fewer residents with high depersonalization
• Fewer residents with a positive depression screen.
• Personal accomplishment did not change.
• The assessment of self-reported quality of care did not significantly change from 2003 to 2004.
• Residents reported attending fewer educational conferences per month.
• Overall residency satisfaction decreased 6 mm on a 100-mm visual analogue score.

This is a true health care crisis of epic proportions!
Compromised medical students, residents and physicians, lead to diminished patient care. Depressed physicians are more likely to make errors, and burnt out physicians understandably display far less empathy for their patients, which interferes with the critical doctor-patient relationship.

Physician Statistics
•A 2011 study conducted by the American Medical Association and the Mayo Clinic reported that nearly 50% of U.S. physicians report at least one symptom of burnout.
•HIGH Job Stress and LOW Personal Autonomy leads to higher chances of BURNOUT!
•Increase prevalence among medical students, residents, and physicians.

Unfortunately, we cannot control some of the pitfalls and torments that life throws at us. There is however much still in our control. The aim should not be to qualify from medical school unscathed by challenge or untested emotionally, but to develop resilience in the face of adversity and a mind for resolve, and to maintain this prosperous quality throughout life.

The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart; his work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appealing to the emotions and higher feelings.”
– – Sir William Osler

Welcome to the mystery and magnificence of your own body. In this program, you’ll learn about research breakthroughs from different scientific fields that you can utilize to enjoy optimal health and well-being. We created this app and our entire platform first and foremost to provide you with the vital health-promoting information, tools, and techniques you need to unleash the remarkable, inborn healing capacity that resides within you.

Meet Your Amazing Body

The truth is you have an amazing body.  One that has an immeasureable capacity for health and well-being, that is lost beneath the dissections, memorization of complex biochemical formulas, cascade of hormones, gene activation and everything else you have and will learn.

I’d like to introduce you to your amazing body. Volumes of encyclopedias couldn’t describe the many wondrous activities that are going on within you right now as you are reading my words on this page. When you mentally scan your body, you are unaware of the thousands of biochemical reactions taking place or the creation and repair of your cells and organs. Nor are you aware of the vigilant protection your immune system is providing you. At this very moment, it is destroying all the invading organisms and foreign particles that could potentially cause you significant harm, while keeping an eye out for any changes in your cells that might indicate the presence of cancer. Fortunately, you don’t need to be aware; everything I’ve just described is happening automatically.

We take our bodies for granted in many ways. We expect them to do what we want when we want: to walk, touch, digest, move, think, and creatively express our thoughts. We don’t sit around wondering why or how the body can do these things. But maybe it’s time we should.

For many, medical school is the first true taste of independent living and the greater demands of the medical profession; as such, how students react and the habits they develop in these four years is especially formative.

Our goal is to encourage self-care, self-enhancement, resilency and wellness that will enable you to succeed in your career as an healthy, empowered physician an example to your patients, colleagues, family and friends of attaining the health that reamins an unrealized potential for many.

Medical School & Wellness

“The physician needs a clear head and a kind heart; his work is arduous and complex, requiring the exercise of the very highest faculties of the mind, while constantly appealing to the emotions and higher feelings.”
– – Sir William Osler

What are you willing to do?

How would life be different if you woke up ready to champion medical school everyday rather than have it rule over you?

These four steps will help you get on the path to health enhancement

Decide                                                                                                                                                         Intend
Focus                                                                                                                                                          Act

Don’t forget to start your 7 Day Accelerate Your Health Challenge, it contains a great health review survey to begin your challenge.  And please check our Power Up Your Health Tips every day!

a.  Make YOUR Health a Priority                                                                                            b. Create and Maintain Emotional Authenticity/ Positive Mind Set                        Development & Maintenance
c. Healthy Diet Test Taking Skills