If you’re a medical student who’s starting to have a medical identity crisis, or want some advice on figuring out how the heck specialties and research work, this is a good episode.

Welcome back to Humans of Medicine - A podcast where we interview and learn about different types of people in medicine and research.

Today we’ve got two very lovely, and very laughy, medical interns, Tina and Charlotte. They both graduated from USyd with Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees - Tina having done computer science, and Charlotte having done biochemistry. They’ve also got a bunch of diverse experiences… From consulting at McKinsey, performing benchtop lab research, and engineering things at Canva - and they’ve now happily come to pursue medicine and more.

This was a really fun chat - and I think, tackles a lot of topics that are difficult to figure out sometimes, especially as an outsider to medicine. Stay tuned for lots of laughs, stories, and practical advice. Hope you enjoy!

If you'd like to contact them or follow up with more questions, flick me an email at: [email protected].

0:57 What brought you to medicine?

4:47 Sticking through medicine

10:30 Balancing medical interning with dance and travel

12:44 Hybrid Careers: Clinician-scientists and teachers

16:38 How does research fit into medical careers?

19:41 How do specialties work? (OBGYN, Anaesthetics)

25:15 Should I be researching in med school?

29:13 Medicine Quick Fires! (Questions from my USyd cohort)

29:41 Which year was the hardest?

30:20 How did you keep things going with times were tough?

31:07 How are you treated as interns?

32:15 How do you make the most of your hospital time?

35:05 How do you ask for advice from doctors?

37:00 Tips for your first clinical exam?

38:29 Advice for first years - Travel to NZ and be open-minded

40:24 Bonus story!