SMS (“Stanford Medical School”) Unplugged was recently launched as a forum for students to chronicle their experiences in medical school. The student-penned entries appear on Scope once a week; the entire blog series can be found in the SMS Unplugged category.
Learning in medical school often feels like learning a completely new language. There are numerous acronyms (OPQRST, CAGE, etc.) and molecules (IL-1, TGF-beta, etc.) and more. But most striking to me are two particularly ubiquitous buzzwords: “high-yield” and “protected time.”
I feel like I heard both these terms – and particularly the former – thrown around every single week of this past school year. “High-yield” has been used to refer to, as you might guess, the material that yields the highest amount of gain – i.e. for us students, it’s the material that’s going to show up on our tests. This term pervades not only conversations among classmates but also study materials. First Aid – one of the main Step 1 book resources – takes pains to highlight “high-yield” concepts, and Pathoma – another Step 1 resource – goes even further, identifying ideas that are not just “high-yield” but also “highEST-yield.”
This idea of focusing on “high-yield’ concepts bothered me at first and continues to bother me a little bit today, largely because my classmates and I often determine for ourselves what is “high-yield” and what is “low-yield,” dedicating our study time to the former and ignoring the latter. The worst part is that we may be ignoring information that may be “low-yield” in the context of exams but actually “high-yield” in the context of patient care. The flip side of this is that we only have a certain number of hours in the day; perhaps it makes sense for us to be judicious about what we focus our attention on?
Another phrase that has been widespread in medical school is the term “protected time.” I started hearing this during the very first week of medical school, when we had part of our afternoon off for “protected study time.” Later in the year, I attended a panel featuring five pediatricians. The question of work-life balance came up, and one of the doctors mentioned that she carved out “protected time” to be with her 2-year-old daughter every evening between 5 and 7 PM. This statement was met with general appreciation but also minor panic. There are so many aspects of our life that deserve “protected time” – family, friends, time for creativity, and more - and yet, again, there are only 24 hours in a day. Where does “protected time” start and end? And what does it include? And is it really reasonable to expect “protected time” when there are so many patient -care demands for physicians to navigate?
As I'm about to enter my second year of medical school, some of my questions remain unanswered. How can my classmates and I make sure to learn medicine well enough and thoroughly enough that we can both meet and exceed expectations in patient care? Is identifying “high-yield” material an ineffective, shortsighted approach? And how do we identify what falls under “protected time”? Here’s hoping I figure out this tentative balance during this upcoming year!
Hamsika Chandrasekar just finished her first year at Stanford’s medical school. She has an interest in medical education and pediatrics.
***
From August 11-25, Scope will be on a limited publishing schedule. During that time, you may also notice a delay in comment moderation. We'll return to our regular schedule on August 25.)
