intern to upper overnight
My attendings, such as faculty who interviewed or worked with me even before residency started, always told me “You may leave academics for a while, but you’ll be right back.” I never understood what they meant, especially for those I thought barely knew me. To me, “academic” medicine represented a vanguard of expertise and renownedness that I could not ascribe to myself. I am tenaciously, and sometimes, maddeningly in love with learning medicine, working in teams, and fixing the big systems of healthcare in which we work…but I am not a big “medical education fellowship” girl, a widely published author, or a giant medical influencer. I chafe with overly formal hierarchical forms of large organizations, and I make a lot of noise wherever I go. As a baby intern, I quickly felt ~internally~ irate at unprepared medical students or anyone I perceived more dispassionate than me. I do not see myself as a naturally “sweet” person that sometimes feels like comes with women in academic medicine.
However, as I have worked on inpatient medicine for going on two straight months now and transitioned from an intern to an upper overnight, I can see in myself what others saw a long time ago. I am not sure if its that I am more confident in my own skills so I have more mental room, or if its because my UT Southwestern edginess has softened, but I absolutely love teaching my medical students and interns. I see the privilege I had to train at such a strong teaching institution. I see how often we ignore medical students or push interns to do,do,do without learning. I am nothing if not a giant nerd at heart. You can lead a team with a dual nature of pushing the team’s learning while also having deep compassion and investment in their wellness and comfort. When I make the effort to coach them on their presentations, teach them about cirrhosis, or break down the management of complicated patients, their eyes literally light up. They say “Wow, this is way more fun that doing Anki!”, and I can see the future of all the medical students, interns and residents they will teach. As we know, people will forget what I say and do, but they will not forget how I made them feel.
I still know my future will take me in a vast array of directions that only makes sense in my head, but for the first time, I can definitely see academic medicine as one place it will go.
~a fresh upper,
Dr. Kadari
#healthcare #academicmedicine #residency #medicine #aafp #ama #interns