AMSA ad lib

Biases in medical training are affecting medical students, but many--including you--may not appreciate that it’s happening. Fixing the problem won’t be easy, but some trainees themselves are working to address pervasive bias in medicine from the ground up. For the students trying to intervene, the first step in addressing bias in medical training is getting everyone to recognize how deeply--and sometimes subtly--ingrained it can be. Medical students Tehreem Rehman and Jes Minor started the Systemic Disease project. Among other goals, the project aims to gather stories from those exposed to or victimized by bias in medicine to start a conversation and increase awareness. To learn more about the Systemic Disease project, visit their website at http://www.systemicdisease.com or follow @systemicdisease on Twitter. You can also find Tehreem (@tehreemrehman) and Jes (@jes_minor) on Twitter as well.

Does being out of your context mean being out of your depth? The school year has come to a close, and for many future physicians, with summer comes an abroad experience. On AMSA ad lib, we’ve heard about picking a responsible study abroad program. But what happens when you are already in the middle of your experience and you find yourself in a tight spot, ethically? Or--maybe more likely--you aren’t sure about what you are seeing. Sometimes, even when you don’t realize it, these questions may spring from your own inexperience. Differences in populations and resources make a big difference in how medicine is practiced outside the United States, and if you have an open mind, that’s the whole point of having a training experience outside your normal context.

Have you given thought to how your life experiences outside medicine will improve your skills as a physician? Coming from a family of physicians, Vidya Viswanathan felt like she needed to cut her own path--one leading in a totally different direction. Her journey took her far afield from health care. Here’s her story of how she found her way back--and how she’s served by everything she learned along the way. Vidya’s story, titled "What do you think I should do," was part of a series of Story Slams presented at AMSA’s 2016 Annual Convention.

These days, we're always looking for an easy fix. Come on, isn't there an app to fix our team? Not exactly. But of course there are ways to use software to help you implement healthy team dynamics, such as transparent goals, and team member accountability. You don't even need anything fancy like the big project planning suites.

Are team members in your small group lifting each other up, or holding each other back? So much of medical training is individual study, but medicine has a growing appreciation for teamwork in health care, and that may reflected at your medical school. Some schools do more group work than others, but you may find yourself on a small group project or even in an informal study group where team dynamics are holding everyone back. What's your role in keeping the group together and on track? What can you do if things start to fall apart?

Even after you’ve left medical school, you’ll have to stay current. There’s a lot more to it than just picking up CME credits; though staying up to date on clinical medicine and pharmacology is critical, there are technologies and trends among patients and society that you’ll have to keep up with. Dr. Jim Slayton explains how he’s found that to be the case over the past 25 years since he graduated medical school and served as AMSA president. He also has some advice on how you, as a medical student, can help more experienced physicians stay up to date on these trends too.

If you don’t know the community you’ll be practicing in, you won’t be able to serve your patients as effectively as possible. So what is the link between community and clinical care, and why does it matter? Here to help us understand the link is Jay Bhatt, D.O. Dr. Bhatt is many things: Primary care physician, national health service corps scholar. He teaches med students, residents...and dancers.

For fourth-years, it all comes down to a single moment. The Match Day ceremonies that will cap off this week at campuses across the country are the end of a long journey for fourth-year medical students. Along the way, they made some huge decisions about themselves and their careers. On Friday, they'll get their envelopes. Here's what that's like.

Learn how to be a effective leader. We've all heard that leaders aren't born, they are made. But who "makes" them, and how? In this episode, Drs. Deborah Hall and Suzanne Rose explore the importance of medical leadership, starting in medical school, and how med students can improve their leadership skills.

As a medical student, you can have real power when it comes to shaping policy and political opinion. But first, you have to seize it. No matter whether you'd like to advocate on behalf of patients, against student debt or for any number of important topics, elected officials will listen to you. Dr. Alison Case is here to help you get started.

Dr. Case would like to extend special thanks to Professor Mary Beth Levin, Dr. Pratima Gupta, and Max Feinstein for their contribution to this episode and more generally their guidance and great advocacy work.

Music is this episode includes "Super Bubbly" by Jesse Spillane, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can find more of his work at http://www.jessespillane.com.