Shock and Awe: Dispatches from Med School

I've just started medical school and will be chronicling my experiences in a series of "Doctor in Training" essays on TIME's Healthland blog. You can read the first installment here. An excerpt:

My very first patient died — twice. 

Less than a week after our White Coat Ceremony — the symbolic start of our medical education, in which we donned short white student coats in front of faculty, friends and family — I, along with a dozen other first-year medical students, am training in basic cardiac life support. 

Our mock clinical scenario: an elderly woman (fortunately, a mannequin, whose vital signs the EMS instructor makes up as we go along) collapses in a ShopRite supermarket, aisle 3. Unresponsive, she has stopped breathing. We check: no pulse. The instructor is quizzing us on the emergency response protocol. Then he asks a different type of question: “Is the patient dead or alive?”

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/14/shock-and-awe-dispatches-from-a-first-year-med-student/#ixzz26SjxUhY3

Worth a read: the doctor-patient relationship

Now that I'm back in school doing my prerequisites for medical school, I'm more interested than ever in health news, particularly when it comes to the way physicians interact with the people they treat. (A classmate and I are co-chairing a focus group on the doctor-patient relationship in my postbac premed program.) This story about the ways in which medical schools are changing their curricula to encourage future doctors to consider the whole patient caught my eye. I especially like the idea that focusing on relating to patients as human beings by adding humanities classes to med school isn't a nice touchy-feely bonus; it's a key part of medical training.

Study: Exercise Can Counteract Obesity Genes

Some families, alas, are fatter than others. But for dieters continually at war with their genes, there's good news in a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine: they can burn off 40% of their genetic predisposition to obesity by exercising. Read the full story on Time.com.

How we fail our female vets

My latest piece, from the 7/12 issue, is about the VA hospital system's struggle to accommodate growing numbers of female veterans. Read it here.

A Brief History of YouTube

YouTube turns five this month. It's changed a lot since its simple beginnings in an office above a California pizza joint. Click here for a brief history of YouTube.

Best in Show: Jane Lynch

I missed this week's Madonna episode, but I'm nonetheless psyched Glee has returned from its 4-month hiatus. To mark the occasion, I sat down with Jane Lynch, who plays the show's deliciously evil cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester. She's actually really nice! Read the profile in this week's mag here.

Why Do Women Still Earn Less Than Men?

On Equal Pay Day--an advocacy day intended to raise awareness of the fact that American women still earn 77 cents on the male dollar--my Time.com story explores reasons for the persistent gap. One study I find compelling explored the wage trajectory for workers who underwent a sex change. Even when controlling for factors like education, men who transitioned to women earned, on average, 32% less after the surgery. Women who became men, on the other hand, earned 1.5% more.