medical school

i was in a similar situation when i was applying - i hadn't really considered med school until my undergrad was mostly over and so i had to take three courses post-graduation to meet the prerequisites to apply. i just took them at my undergrad alma mater - the admissions office was p understanding and i didn't really have to do to much other than book an appointment and pay for the classes. i never had the impression that it made much of a difference in my interviews although i think it did make a difference in how well i actually did in the courses themselves, since i was working a reasonably demanding f/t job while taking them. and ime my interviewers seemed more interested in the work that i was doing btw graduating and applying than my marks in the courses i had taken, which i feel just kinda got rolled together the rest of my undergraduate performance. so i guess my advice would be to put some serious thought into what sort of work you'll be doing outside of your coursework as that 's probably what's going to set you apart in the application process

i had basically zero pre-med courses under my belt at graduation: upper-level math, english, and i'm not even sure those are required anymore.

i didn't want to take two years for a post-bacc, so i applied to a "dedicated" program at montana state for no reason other than it was in montana. i was actually their first-ever applicant (the website went live before the program had been approved by the board of regents), and i was basically accepted over the phone.

it was the first year of the program AND the person running it was transitioning to a new job out east, so it definitely wasn't as smoothly run as some of your fancier post-bacc programs. and really, it ended up being almost equivalent to enrolling in undergrad courses and going part-time: all our classes were with the undergrads, and according to their scheduling needs. this meant only 2-3 courses at a time (max), and spread out over 15 months. i actually had to take a few more classes than others, because my current med school (and where i had expected to have the best chance of matriculating, being my home state) was one of the last remaining to require stuff like biochem and english and stats and psych and so on. i think a lot more schools have pared it down to phys/chem/orgo and basically nothing else?

if it had been possible to even ~get~ a job, i probably could've managed it, but work is hard to come by out there. only one of my cohort was working, but she had already lived in town for a few years, and was and is a superhuman (40+hr/wk as an EMT, pulled a 4.0 and a 39 on the MCAT...went on to attend my alma mater's med school and is now a gen surg resident. this woman was a DRAMA major, ppl)

that said, i think C-L/Lamp are right about the focus largely being on what you're doing with your time that ISN'T post-bacc classes. post-bacc students, even at the boot-campier programs, have the luxury of being pre-meds w/o the distractions of humanities requirements and being idiot 20 year olds. i think schools likely hold their performance to a slightly higher standard if they're going full-time and not working. otoh, if you're actually doing shit while ALSO taking classes, that demonstrates ~gumption~ and the ability to manage yr time and so on, so maybe they'll give you a break.

i'm not really the best person to ask, in a way---i only landed two med school interviews! otoh my "missing years" were a lot weirder and tougher to explain coherently than yours, k3v, pharm school ought to be a feather in yr cap. i was applying as an english major (and one with a marginally above average undergrad GPA from a fancy school), who had made a documentary (never picked up) on and off for a couple years while working shit jobs (blatantly ski bumming), then worked as an ad writer, then did a post-bacc, then worked shit jobs again and "played in a rock band" while submitting applications in my "gap year." i had very solid post-bacc grades from a western land-grant university that i clearly went to in order to be near the mountains, an above average MCAT (hoisted to the right of the curve almost entirely due to the reading/language section), a string of volunteer experiences that weren't long-term since i moved so much, and lots and lots of good stories that no one would ask me or care about.

one attending who had worked on an admissions board told me that i must've been "catnip" to med schools (i wasn't), while others have looked at me with varying degrees of confusion and/or suspicion when they hear about my pre-medicine life (lives), like "who let you in?"

tl;dr i'm sure you'll be fine.

Basically everybody will tell you that it is vastly preferable to have some kind of other life experience you bring to the table, but what that means is "assuming all other things are equal". You absolutely do have a leg up on 21-year-old college seniors who are applying to medical school because that's what they're supposed to do, but that advantage gets reduced by the all the things they have that you do not (potentially grades/MCAT scores, and having knocked out everything on the Big Checklist of things you're supposed to have on your medical school application (research, volunteering, shadowing, medical trips abroad, leadership, etc.) because they pursued undergrad with that specific goal in mind.

I spent a year between leaving grad school and applying to med school hitting other checklist points (volunteering, EMT work, biochemistry courses that produced some additional science coursework A grades and got me a letter of rec from a science professor), while also working (at a vaguely healthcareish job which probably was more clinically valuable than anything on the checklist). Basically my thinking was I needed to get interviews, and so I figured the better I could make myself look on paper, the better chance I'd have of being able to make or break myself in person. (I specifically remember thinking I needed at least four, because that's when the probabilities are pretty safe, and my now-alma-mater was my fourth interview, and the only one where the guy legit told me "So you're going to get in." He was also the only interviewer who was really excited about my wacky history adventures; the others ranged from "that's cool" to "why should we believe you won't just go back to being a historian? YOU HAVE TO COMMIT TO MEDICINE")

lamp, C-L, gbx, thanks so much for the thoughtful replies, it means a lot to me really

re: post-bacc, this is what the gist of my email was about. the post-bacc program at uconn offers two tracks, one for non-science majors (this is probably what gbx would have taken) and another one for students who majored in "science" but lack the prerequisite credits; this one is more of a pick-and-choose when it comes to the classes one takes and is more tailored to the individual's schedule. i think it would be best for me to do this, though when i met with the guy (who also happens to direct the program, i've recently learned) back in september he recommended against it mainly because he thought it'd be redundant with my history. back then i didn't really realize how many classes i still need: i need two semesters of physics, an orgo lab, maybe even some chemistry depending on whether my AP credits are good, a genetics class and probably some sort of statistics class. so i'm going to see what he recommends (of course i stilll would have to apply and get into the program!). my options are what i've just mentioned, which i think based both on the structure of the program and uconn's good name would be...ideal? but of course there is also the option of taking classes outside of the official program, which i think is doable. also there is the option of online classes, which i guess has its positives and negatives: given the fact that i'm like, not an undergrad anymore, it'd probably be the most convenient, and likely it'd be relatively cheap. but there's always the risk that, even if they're offered by reputable universities and are "accredited", that they (1) may not be accepted everywhere and (2) even if they are, they might be viewed unfavorably compared with actual live classes.

one...advantage i might have in this process, i guess, is time - i think the earliest i'll apply would be for fall of 2015. this should give me some time to shore up some of my weaknesses that C-L mentioned. for one thing, i've got pretty much no "research experience" (ugh). i do have ~some~ 'clinical' research experience from a few months ago that i like to talk about but i'm not sure if that "counts" really, idk. i don't even know where to start or whether it's worth it. i do have some friends i could talk to i guess, and there's always the option of professors from pharmacy school.

there's another thing i've been thinking about recently. one of my professors, whom i admire a lot, and happen to have a rotation with in april, is involved with a (relatively well-known?) refugee clinic in mae sot, thailand (i think he helped establish the pharmacy there or something). a very good friend of mine worked (well, for free) there for 3 or 4 months after he graduated a couple years ago. this is something that i've kind of been dreaming about doing** ever since our first public health class with the guy, and i'm thinking this summer might be a great chance to get to do it, not only because it's something i really want to do but because it would potentially "look good" (ugh) for medical school. depending on when my classes start (and my financial situation, lololol), this could be a good option for "something to do" between graduation and post-bacc classes. i need to have a serious conversation with my friend and then potentially bring it up with my prof.

i haven't been able to fall asleep at night at all for the past week or so, just thinking about all of this. it's terror mostly, but it's part excitement too. i don't know if all this is going to go smoothly or if it'll be a complete mess, but it's what i want to try and i'm gonna fuckin go for it.

**like 4 years ago my dream was to be a pharmacist for MSF for a while after i graduated, lol. then i learned you need like 3 years of professional experience to even apply

Greetings ilx physicals and physicians-to-be.

I am not, nor shall I ever be, a medical student and/or physician, but I am headed back to school for social work and am interested in eventually practicing in a health care setting (hospital, hospice, long-term care facility, etc.).

I'd love to hear your experiences working with social workers. What is the hospital dynamic between medical and social services departments? Other thoughts/experiences?

um I meant to write *physicians*, not *physicals* duh.

I've worked closely with the social workers on the inpatient Neurology service ever since I was a resident. One veteran SW in particular is my favorite: seen it all, great sense of humor, relaxed and friendly, willing to go the extra mile to help people out.

A surprisingly huge amount of inpatient care depends on social work, including sometimes the need for admission in the first place (caregiver fatigue / "acopia"). Since my main goal as a doctor is to figure out what's *really* going on, my final diagnosis and plan often revolves around social work issues, and I often arrange family meetings to sort out the necessary details. As a resident I used to joke that I was going to do a fellowship in Neuro Social Work. The inclination is longstanding: my Dad's a social worker and so are many of our family friends, and I did some similar work part time as an undergrad, volunteering for a teen help hotline etc.

AFAIK the alliance I like to think I have with the SW team isn't necessarily the rule. I get the sense that some doctors are way less interested in the details and just want the social aspects of the case sorted out so they can discharge the patient and free up a bed. Which is a shame.

Yeah so my job right now (I do a lot of inpatient medicine at the Baltimore VA and the OTHER University affiliated tertiary care center in town) is very frequently as much about social issues as about medical issues. We have 2 people on a list of 13 who are medically fine but with us indefinitely pending impossible social situation resolutions, and probably 3-4 others who are as much about social/placement issues as about whatever we're doing medically. I do not strictly want to just get people OTMFL (off the list) but after you get stuck doing nothing for a person who has no medical issues but can't get placed or settled, it gets really frustrating really quickly. In theory my job exists for some sort of educational benefit, and in practice the learning is frequently shunted because patients who are medically unstable (or regrettably unfixable) cannot go to where they are better served.

I am not a fan of interdisciplinary rounds (social work, case manager, usually utilization review, sometimes PT/OT, sometimes nutrition, sometimes pastoral care) at all, though. Frequently you go in saying "Here is what this dude needs to be able to leave" and the response is "Yeah his insurance doesn't cover anything" or "he's not qualified for admission criteria" or some other version of "Hahaha fuck your medical work, this guy stays until people who have nothing to do with his medical care decide to do what they feel like". It's not the fault of the social worker or the case manager or whomever is saying this, but some of them (especially Utilization Review people--MY GOD) basically accuse you of being shitty at medicine for not following rules made arbitrarily by possibly insane people.

This is good info, thanks! I only started thing *seriously* about changing careers to social work when circumstances took me to the ER with an elderly neighbor. Her closest relatives (distant cousins, actually) were out of state, and she wasn't in a condition to manage her care. . . when the ER social worker came in to see her it was like a light bulb went off--"oh hey there are social workers at hospitals!" Thank god!

I'm one of those people who gets really calm and centered when surrounded by stress/chaos/uncertainty/ppl freaking out, and I'm pretty good at herding cats to get shit done. These things seem to be U&K for social workers in hospitals. But I am slightly concerned about the politics in the hospital setting, i.e. are social workers really taken seriously/appreciated by members of the medical care team?

I've got a business-side question for the doctors here. I had a corneal scrape on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. When I went back a week later for the followup, was told my surgeon had some kind of emergency so I had to see the (non-cornea-procedure) ophthalmologist. He took out the bandage contact and scheduled me for another followup a month later (two weeks ago) - during this he said my original surgeon would not be returning, couldn't tell me what the emergency was. Also made it very clear that he was not a fan of the procedure and wouldn't do the second eye regardless of how dramatically successful etc. Finally he caved and said he'd write me a referral to yet another ophthalmologist who might do the second scrape.

Fortunately, when I went to schedule with this other doctor, the scheduler casually mentioned she'd talked to my original surgeon - he's now practicing in another town, not far. I was overjoyed, asked if she could give me his contact details - which she did, but still put in the referral request to the third doctor. I'm now scheduled with my original surgeon in his new practice, but wondered - how much of a thing is this now? Is it due to non-compete contracts? Are there rules about doctors contacting their existing patients when they change practices? This whole "emergency" thing makes me never want to see doctor #2 ever again.

This is eerily similar to hair salons refusing to tell you where your favorite stylist decamped to, no?

i have no clue about that, tbh

I've never had that happen before, either! People have generally told me where they were off to, so I could follow if I wanted. The last time was my primary care doctor, 7 years ago though.

To Quincie: if anything, since the hospital staff deal with a handful of social workers who are terrible, the ones who are actually super-helpful are almost universally beloved. People who get into medicine because they think medicine is interesting get very frustrated with people who are not medically interesting but nonetheless eat up hours and hours of work related to their non-medical needs. Really good support staff make our lives easier, and we really like that. Like, the only difference between teams at the VAs are the variously assigned case managers and social workers, and everybody would rather be on the one with the really good social worker and the INCREDIBLE case manager than the ones with the terrible, terrible social worker (the other case managers all pale in comparison to the great one, so that part is essentially a wash).

Is it due to non-compete contracts

Yep.

Good to know. Dr #2 made out like it was some part of HIPPA.

http://www.forensicmag.com/Assets/images/1209/art3fig1.gif

god i hope this works

http://billyplus.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/fingers-crossed.jpg

good luck!!

i finalized my list post-call, on 3.5hrs of sleep in 34hrs of wakefulness, and through actively revolting contact lenses. i think we're good, lined up, imma try not to think about gary anderson in '98

More like Vinatieri in the snow.

i do have a soft spot for new england

what's happening, gbx?

http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Sorting_Hat

nb i have not read these books but this seems about right

I wonder if the sorting hat is actually an NP-complete problem

Awwww yeah. I have been harassing the 4th year students with us in the MICU this month about their rank lists and such and such, and totally forgot to harass you. It is the most magical time~

The 3rd Friday in March is awesome, assuming the 3rd Monday in March is not the worst day.

(nb for others: gbx is now reaching the end of his direct involvement in the matching process. He has spent the past several months going around to programs and interviewing them and being interviewed by them. Either tonight or tomorrow or the next day (I forget) he and the other 4th year students are required to submit their final ranked list of programs to the National Resident Matching Program, which is for all intents and purposes a big computer in the sky, or a sorting hat as above.)

(So between now and the 3rd Monday in March, what the big sorting hat computer does is take every 4th year student's ranks and put them against the ranks of every residency program. The algorithm roughly favors the applicant, so that you will be assigned to your top choice program unless your top choice has also been selected by other people who that program likes more than you.)

(What happens on the 3rd Monday in March is that you get an email saying "You have matched!" or the worst e-mail, which means you have been thrust into the pool of the unsorted, and you spend the remainder of your week attempting to pair yourself with a program whose spots remain unfulfilled. You do not get to find out exactly WHERE you have matched until Noon EST on the 3rd Friday in March, which is also typically the 2nd day of the NCAA tournament, and sometimes also St. Patrick's Day. What I'm suggesting is that you and your friends drink like champions, unless things go poorly.)

are you still matching psych programs gbx?

yup

good luck bro

GL gbx!

nervous.gif

Exciting! good luck!

gbx is going to be literally psyched in literally just a few weeks time when he gets his residency

Good luck, gbx - hope you wind up somewhere fabulous!

hope you become a really good psychiatrist, gbx. This world needs compassionate and excellent mental health pros in it, I'm glad you're gonna take that on.

^^ I heartily agree. It's a difficult specialty you've chosen. I hope you and your patients prosper well.

exciting! crossing all my fingers for you, gbx! :) :)

you'll do fine, man. is minnesota your #1?

...

i do have a soft spot for new england

― well if it isn't old 11 cameras simon (gbx), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:11 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Did you pick any hospitals here? Lord knows we have a lot of them. Also, good luck GBX!

oh that's bad luck isn't it, ignore me

I have asked every 4th year student I've worked with in the past couple of months how their rank list was going and where they wanted to go, and they usually have no problem talking about it. Some people I knew did lock it under wraps, but usually there's not just one program you're really really really hoping for and then some other losers. (I was prepared enough to bring 5 university T-shirts with me on Match Day, even though I was like 97% sure I was going to get one of my top 2, and reasonably sure I was going to get my #1. I would have been delighted with any of those 5, though.)

Plus It's always super interesting to listen to people talk through why they want to do what they want to do. I ALWAYS ask 3rd year students what they want to do when they grow up within like fifteen minutes of meeting them, because you basically get them to explain how their mind works.

haha, yeah, i've actually been p forthright in person about where i want to go now that the ROL is in, for some reason i'm feeling coy about it on ~the internet~

but basically my top choices are all in places i've lived before, or currently live.

i have also been asking MS3s about what they want to be when they grow up, for p much the same reason---ppl will lay out some telling facts about their values/schema when they explain why they want to, say, look at skin for the rest of their life (my anatomy partner explicitly stated her intentions for derm on the ACTUAL FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL and lo it came to pass...she was of course the perfect dermatological candidate (GUNNER)...she also told me that "yeah, psych suits you..." in the way that well-meaning southern ladies say "bless your heart"). on the one hand, i hate being yet another person asking them that loaded question, on the other: a fourth-year or an intern is probably the safest person in the hierarchy to confess your---let's face it---lack of interest in whatever it is you happen to be doing at that time.

also i will admit that i savor ever so slightly the fact that i am barely more informed than the third-years, and have Pearls to offer. mostly this involves using Epic, and not actual medicine. (PRO-TIP: find yr senior's preferred note template, and copy it over to yr dotphrases, they will be astounded by yr mind-melding and think of you favorably)

oh, Epic, famously written on the most terrifying legacy platform ever devised by the community of sick freaks who call themselves programmers

this article is almost definitely about working at Epic

I say this without irony: EMRs need a Linus Torvalds, or something.

a high-quality, open format (and widely used) digital health record would make the world a better place, full stop

gawande should make that his next project

just finished checklist manifesto last night btw and while it was good and otm i thought complications was way better