Socializing 101

Thomas Robey -- Consider this column a plea for help.

All across the Pacific Northwest, third year medical students are studying for exams this week. As with the season, winter clerkships have reached their finale. For students at my school (the University of Washington) there is another potential stressor: the weekend switch. As in many programs, students here carry out their required clerkships in different cities. Unlike other programs, those different cities could be separated by 2500 miles (Cheyenne, WY to Fairbanks, AK). Such periodic migration creates interesting challenges and presents unique opportunities. I want to focus on one of the challenges here.

Apart from my wife, the only folks I know where we’re heading next have bushy tails. (When we were in Spokane, WA earlier this year, some squirrels took to apprehending peanuts we put out for the birds.) But we won’t be without human colleagues in Spokane. There are a handful of other students in each city, but thanks to a rupture in my educational space-time continuum, I know R3s better than I know my classmates. Thankfully, medical students tend to be an outgoing lot -– it’s easy to get along, and someone is bound to have a “We made it to Missoula” get-together to build local community. So what’s my problem?

I’m worried that grad school converted me to an introvert! I have to admit, six months into the third year, I’m still getting used to this medical student thing. Life in the land of PCR machines, mouse colonies, and lab slumber parties completely deprived me of interactions with my kindred classmates. There were the occasional social events as my colleagues advanced, but as a committed lab-rat, I found myself increasingly distanced from the social aspects of medicine.

When folks consider re-immersing themselves in the medical curriculum after a year abroad or time doing research, it’s usually the factual content they expect to have lost. My worries were endless. Will I keep straight bactericidal and bacteriostatic effects? Nephrotic? Nephritic? The differential diagnosis for dyspnea? Surprisingly, these facts have emerged from the recesses of my mind without much consequence.

What has been slow on the draw for me is filling the gregarious shoes of the social medical student. Do you know what I am talking about? It’s that little circle that forms at open social events where amazing accounts of patient care are shared, frustrations with curriculum are vented, and future schemes are planned. Working long hours with hardly a chance to reflect makes these confluences of experience vital to students’ mental health. (It’s also a good way to practice a succinct presentation of your patients’ histories!) This part of medicine presents me with the steepest learning curve. I’m too easily flooded in sensory overload.

Has anyone else noticed this phenomenon and had difficulty breaking in to it? Sometimes we offer tips on The Differential. This time around, I’m looking for a few myself.