medical students

Illustration of a young doctor trapped in a snow globe, by Katherine Streeter for NPR.

Health & Safety

Working The Christmas Shift, 2 Young Doctors Learn What It Means To Be A Healer

5:00am December 24, 2019

by John Henning Schumann

There's more to being a good doctor than providing medical care to your patients, physicians learn early in their training. And sometimes that lesson comes at the darkest time of year.

Russell Ledet, a second-year medical student (top row, third from left) organized an outing for 14 of his fellow African American classmates to a former plantation that had slave quarters. Ledet says he would caption this photo "Our Moment of Resiliency."

Health & Safety

Black Med Students At Former Slave Quarters Say 'This Is About Resiliency'

11:37am December 19, 2019

by Emily Vaughn

Tulane University medical students visited a former plantation last week to take a photo that's going viral. "We were embodying the strength of the people who lived on those grounds," a student says.

"The profession we love has been taken over," psychiatrist and novelist Samuel Shem tells NPR, "with us sitting there in front of screens all day, doing data entry in a computer factory."

Novelist Doctor Skewers Corporate Medicine In 'Man's 4th Best Hospital'

9:00am November 13, 2019

by Mara Gordon

Samuel Shem's 1978 novel, The House of God, was a sardonic look at U.S. medicine through a young doctor's eyes. Shem's new fiction checks in with the same crew in the age of medicine by smartphone.

Sarah Spiegel, a third-year student at New York Medical College, pushed for more education on LGBT health issues for students.

Medical Students Push For More LGBT Health Training To Address Disparities

8:02am January 20, 2019

by Rachel Cohen

One in 5 LGBT adults has avoided medical care for fear of discrimination, according to a recent survey, and 80 percent of physicians surveyed say they feel "not competent" to treat LGBT patients.

A moment from Embodied Labs' virtual reality video of Clay Crowder, a fictional 66-year-old man with incurable lung cancer. In this scene, Clay's family gathers around his bed, reassuring him that it's OK to let go of life.

Virtual Reality Helps Hospice Workers See Life And Death Through A Patient's Eyes

12:18pm December 27, 2018

by Kathleen Burge

A Maine medical school and nearby hospice center are trying out a VR program aimed at fostering more empathy for dying patients among health workers-in-training. Not everyone is sold on the idea.

Doctors who trained in foreign medical schools often end up practicing in rural or low-income areas in the U.S. with a shortage of physicians.

Let's Hope That Match Day Brings Us Lots Of Foreign-Born Doctors

11:18am March 17, 2017

by John Henning Schumann

About one quarter of medical residents in the U.S. are graduates of foreign medical schools. Many practice medicine in communities that have a hard time recruiting doctors.

Medical graduates from Iran, in Philadelphia on research fellowships, anxiously await results of their U.S. medical residency applications. The Trump administration's immigration executive order has put added stress on "match week" for them.

Travel Ban Adds Stress To 'Match Week' For Some Doctors

2:16pm March 16, 2017

by Elana Gordon

A medical residency program is the next training step for newly minted doctors, and awaiting "the match" can be tense. For some international students, Trump's travel ban has made that tension worse.

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Medical students at George Washington University met with residents of Washington, D.C., to find out what challenges they face in managing asthma.

This Med School Teaches Health Policy Along With The Pills

7:43pm June 09, 2016

by Julie Rovner

First-year medical students are usually busy studying lots of basic science and medicine. One medical school is making a point of schooling them on how health care delivery affects their patients.

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Dr. Bill Mahon says a gorgeous coast and the chance to practice a more personal style of community medicine lured him to remote Fort Bragg, Calif., 35 years ago.

Help Wanted: Last Pediatrician On Mendocino Coast Retires

8:27am August 31, 2015

by Farida Jhabvala Romero

For 35 years, Dr. Bill Mahon has tended newborns and broken bones, given kids checkups and spinal taps. But luring new doctors with big debt and urban dreams to the redwoods is harder than it sounds.

University of Chicago medical student Manny Quaidoo adds a pinch of salt to the spinach feta frittata he's learning to cook as part of a culinary medicine class.

Health & Safety

A Dose Of Culinary Medicine Sends Med Students To The Kitchen

2:36pm July 06, 2015

by Monica Eng

Aspiring doctors at the University of Chicago are learning how to teach patients about healthy eating. Nutrition advocates say this kind of training is critical to fighting obesity and diabetes.

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