The Medical Student Dilemma

The joys of worrying whether expressing your needs will affect your (very subjective) grade.

Want me to make you a personalized video for you or your friend? Check me out on Cameo!

Want to connect with me and watch more content?
Find me on TikTok!

And Instagram!

All content is intended as medical education or entertainment and is NOT intended to be medical advice. If you have any symptoms concerning you, please schedule an appointment with your doctor.

Join my channel to get access to perks! Click link below:

[MsMyrmaid]

The "prefers to remain anonymous" sent me.

[wholeNwon]

The "student" was the test subject. Publication expected next month. Gotta love psych.

[whendydargis]

I once sent an e-mail to an oncology professor, for which I agonized over every word for ages, just like in this video.

His reply was "no".

No punctuation, no capitalization, no signature. Just two lower case letters. And it wasn't even clear what part of my e-mail he was saying "no" to. To this day, I am baffled.

[nkoawest]

I think my worst experience with this as a student was being told the on call microbiologist only accepted referrals by email and point blank refused to speak over the phone. Even worse, he demanded excruciatingly detailed histories about their symptoms, fevers, cultures, and current antibiotic therapy.

I was tasked with emailing a consult to him and spent an hour writing it and was forced by the junior doctor to sign off with my name and medical student status, only for the response to be a haunting "call me - Sent from my iPhone."

[amylynn]

This brings back bad memories. During residency (in the olden days before cell phones) it was Saturday morning of a long weekend. I was post call and just had to run some stat blood I had drawn down to the lab before I could check out and leave. The elevator got stuck between floors with me and a patient’s husband inside. The phone in the elevator didn’t work. We finally decided to trigger the alarm in the hopes that somebody would hear it and rescue us. Unfortunately, the alarm rang every time they stopped the elevator to move a gurney so everyone was used to ignoring it. We stayed there about 45 minutes with the alarm blaring before they got us out. Good times.

[JaimeDornanLady]

In nursing school, we had a break during a lecture & most of us headed down to the 1st floor (class was on the 3rd floor) to the vending machines. We got back on the elevator to return to class, & the elevator locked up! We couldn’t get it to move at all, cell phones didn’t exist yet, there wasn’t a phone in the elevator. We also had the scariest professor of all at the time for that class. One girl in the elevator had SEVERE claustrophobia, & was freaking out! Nobody knew what to do. We all ended up screaming for help, hoping we could get someone to hear us & get help! Luckily, someone finally heard us & did get help, so they got the elevator moving enough that we could get out & get back to class. We had to get notes from someone else, but we were thankful that our professor understood & didn’t hold it against us that we were late getting back to class!

[tach-ich-bins]

Every email I sent during the first year of uni. The answers wheels always without any „hello“ or „goodbye“ and mostly just: „ok“.

[tommiegirl]

Lol!!! That bit about the anonymous intern laid me out! The response was probably "ok" and help finally came in an hour. Well done as usual, Doc! 🤣💜

[lsmarshaledherthoughts]

This is one of my FAVORITES! I've witnessed conversations between medical students and residents that make this spot on!

[tobybartels]

The poor guy was so rushed that he didn't even finish figuring out which font to use.

[sharon]

the sprinkles of new times romans for professionalism. perfect

[brockm]

The signature got me. You’ve done it again, doc!

[courtney-ray]

I remember being that student. Now I get those messages from my students! 😂 Because I remember how it was, I try to give them more than one word replies…most of the time. 😆

[ACAB.forcutie]

Why do I feel like Schmidt got an email like this and just had to imagine the backstory

[jamesm.]

😂😂 Your content helps to inspire me to keep aiming to get into Med School. Keep bringing smiles to us Doctor Schmidt.

[Doylt]

At least he thinks about it! A consultant I know is one of those “option A or option B?” “Yes.” emailers.

[ninakaiser]

I laughed so hard at the end! 🤣 And really hope someone did. open that door for them. 😅

[dionbaillargeon]

That's me writing to my future PhD supervisor. She even joked about that to me. 🤣

[thepractisingdoc]

Love your vids! Do make a couple on the experience of an Internal Medicine residency

[jasonb]

lmao at the intern that prefers to be anonymous...legend man. this hits in the feels.