Interview with Dr. Charles Cochran, anesthesiologist and blogger [Show Summary]

Are you wondering what life is like as a med student? Resident? Practicing physician? Do you want to graduate without mountains of debt? Do you want to be able to have work/life balance when you start practicing? Interested in rural medicine? Anesthesiology? Hear from Dr. Charles Cochran about the unique path he took to becoming a doctor, and his advice on how not to bury yourself in student loan debt.

Med school admissions, med student life and #lifeofamedstudent [Show Notes]

Our guest today, Dr. Charles Cochran, is a Hoosier through and through. He grew up in Indiana, attended Indiana State as an undergrad, and Indiana University School of Medicine Bloomington, which he graduated from in 2013. He did his residency also at Indiana U Medical Center in anesthesiology. On the side, he started the Twitter hashtag #lifeofamedstudent and a very popular pre-med and med student web site by the same name.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? [2:05]

I grew up in a small town called Spencer, not far from IU – Bloomington. I knew early on I wanted to get into medicine - my dad was a chiropractor. I rode horses on the weekend, spent lots of time in the woods learning to hunt and fish – basically a traditional rural Indiana upbringing.

How did you become interested in medicine? [2:56]

My dad was a chiropractor and gave me exposure to medicine as a rural clinician. He didn’t push me to be a chiropractor but he thought if I was interested in medicine I should go for a more advanced license, an MD or DO. Even from high school I had a pretty clear idea I wanted to go into medicine, and luckily it all worked out. I didn’t take a gap year, which was fine with me. Now that I am paying back my loans I am glad I went through as quickly as I did. It is nice to be done!

What was the hardest part of applying to medical school? [4:29]

I was part of the Indiana State/IU rural bachelor/MD program, so applying to medical school was pretty straightforward. The program takes people from small towns and provides them with a pathway to becoming a physician in hopes they will return to a small town and practice medicine. Ideally the state would like primary care physicians, and while I didn’t go that route, I think I still fulfilled that goal by practicing in a rural, midsize hospital.

In a lot of ways things were set up for me since the first day of undergrad. If you maintain an average GPA of 3.5 and met the minimum required MCAT you were set for admission to medical school. Once I was in the program it was a matter of sticking with it. It wasn’t always easy – I did have to take the MCAT a second time – but overall it was much less stressful.

What was the best part of your medical experience at Indiana University? [6:38]

IU has a lot of regional campuses - 8-9 where you can go for your first two years. I guess this could be considered the best and sometimes the worst. You are in one (rural) place for two years, and then Indianapolis for two years. I actually really liked it – I spent the first two years in Terra Haute, and then moved to the big city for years 3-4,