April 28, 2011

By Andrew Morris-Singer, MD

Recently, I was on the phone with a 2nd year medical student who leads his medical school’s primary care student interest group. As we chatted, he recounted all of the fantastic stuff his group had accomplished over the year: a panel discussion of primary care providers, a talk by a local clinician-innovator, and a regular primary care policy journal-club. As always, I was blown away by his energy and commitment to making a difference in primary care while being a full-time medical student.

Despite all of his group’s successes, he confided to me that he felt something was missing. more...

April 21, 2011

By Nivedita Ghosh, MD

When I began medical school years ago—attending lectures on anatomy in cavernous auditoriums, dissecting a human body, and memorizing what the extensor pollicis brevis did—I had a hard time making the connection between what I was studying and what I would need to become a doctor. Hell-bent on not flunking out, I put my faith in the established curriculum and dutifully attended all the lectures and labs. But I still frequently thought to myself, “I don’t get it. How will this help me take care of patients?” more...

April 14, 2011

By Deepa Rani Nandiwada

So many of us go into health care bright-eyed, bushy tailed, and with a mission to change the world by taking care of the underserved. Then we go through medical school. Afterwards, we are not only tired, but we are also in debt greater than anything we had ever imagined. For even the staunchest believers in social justice, it is daunting to hold onto our idealism under such circumstances. Across the nation, there has been a student-based movement to stay more connected with these ideals during medical school through student-run free clinics.

Before I started medical school, I spent a year volunteering full time with Americorps in the South Bronx. I saw firsthand the impact that healthcare had on my students and their families. These were vulnerable patients for whom healthcare was a luxury, not an expectation. When I entered George Washington University (GWU) School of Medicine in 2006, my dream was to go back and make an impact on these patients’ lives both through primary care and through health policy. But as I progressed through medical school, multiple choice letters swimming through my head, the faces that inspired me started to fade into the background, and I knew that I needed something more to keep me going. more...

April 11, 2011

By Janine Knudsen

A year ago, I sat in a coffee shop in Jamaica Plain, deep in conversation with two Harvard medical students about the future of primary care at their institution. I hung onto every word they said – their opinions on changing attitudes toward primary care at Harvard were going to make or break my decision about whether to move to Boston for medical school. What they described, a small but growing community that was sparking a primary care renaissance at Harvard, had me hooked. I sent in my decision letter soon after. After Thursday’s Primary Care Town Hall, the first since Harvard launched its Center for Primary Care, I am more confident than ever that I made the right decision. more...

April 7, 2011

By Nikita Srinivasan

When my classmates and I formed the Georgetown Chapter of Primary Care Progress in late September 2010, one thing became very clear to us: almost no one at our college knew what primary care was. We would mention our club to classmates and discover that some (particularly those from outside the United States) hadn’t even heard of primary care; others had no idea what the job of a primary care physician entailed. Many who did know couldn’t imagine why anyone would go into primary care given its financial disincentives. So the goal of our first panel (titled “The Changing Face of Primary Care”) was obvious: education. more...