medical students
Financial Planning Considerations for Surgical Trainees: Webinar Highlights
Authors: Camila R. Guetter, MD MPH*; Rachel E. Mooney, MD*; Alizeh Abbas, MD; Kylie Dickerson, MD *Indicates co-first authors. This blog summarizes key advice and resources from the AWS Webinar on Financial Planning, held on April 9th, 2026, and co-hosted by the Resident & Fellow and the Medical Student Committees. You can find the recording for this webinar here. Building Good Habits and Budgeting as a Medical Student or Resident From college to medical school to residency, each stage of training brings a new financial reality requiring different strategies and habits. Medical students often carry loan balances that only grow, while residents navigate, in many cases, their first paycheck and the challenge of dividing income between fixed expenses, personal wants, and savings. One of the most powerful habits trainees can build is automating their finances. Setting up automatic transfers to savings, loan payments, and retirement contributions eliminates guesswork and protects...
How One Question Led Me to Surgical Research: A Guide for Women in Medicine
Author: Hala AlDabbous For many medical students, research can feel like an intimidating, distant world, something reserved for residents or those with connections. I used to think the same. What I’ve learned, however, is that research is not a privilege, it is a skill, and like any skill in medicine, it can be learned, practiced, and developed over time. My journey into research didn’t begin with confidence. It began with curiosity. The turning point came during the recent surge in the use of GLP-1 receptor agonists in Kuwait. As these medications became increasingly popular, I found myself drawn not to their well known benefits, but to their less discussed clinical effects. I began to wonder what kinds of patients we might start seeing as a result, and whether there were patterns we had yet to fully understand. That curiosity made the topic feel real and relevant, something unfolding in front...
A (Probably Too Realistic) Week in My Life as a Medical Student
Author: Tessa Paul Hi!! I’m Tessa, a second-year medical student at LSU Health Shreveport. I originally picked this week because I was heading to the Women in Surgery Career Symposium in Florida. I expected a calm start to a new class block before traveling. A productive, balanced, slightly aesthetic week in my life. That plan didn’t last long. A sudden freeze caused an unexpected schedule change. Add travel stress and burnout I didn’t want to admit, and what I thought would be calm quickly became chaotic (how my weeks normally go). So instead of a curated version of med school, this is one of the real weeks. Sunday: The Reset Day That Wasn’t Supposed to be: reset dayReality: emergency renal exam prep My renal exam got moved from Friday to Monday, and my reset day became survival mode. I woke up at 10:00 am (no weekend alarms ever), did emails...
Empathy in Medical Training: Lessons from Illness
By Maria Jimena Barroso Alverde When I was little, I honestly believed I had a sixth sense. I’d get this knot in my stomach, or a rush in my chest, and I was convinced something big was about to happen. I didn’t know the word for it back then, anxiety, but it has shaped the way I experience the world. It has made me sensitive, alert, and made me always pay attention to the things few people seem to notice. I didn’t know then, but those sensations were my very first lessons in empathy. Years later, during medical school, life gave me the lesson I never asked for but somehow needed. At 22, I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. One moment I was learning to use an ultrasound; the next, I was staring at an image that changed my entire life. Suddenly, I wasn’t the student standing confidently beside the...
Yes, I Want to Be a Surgeon and No, I Don’t Need to Be Talked Out of It
By Lilah Kahloon Halfway through my third year of medical school, I began feeling the urge to lie whenever someone asked me what specialty I was considering. Going into rotations, I never fell prey to the urge some students have to say they are interested in whatever specialty they are on. When I walked into my first day of internal medicine and was asked what I wanted to do, I was honest. I was eager to learn about everything the internists had to teach me but I was interested in being a surgeon, and I didn’t see a reason to hide that. However, I quickly realized that there was often subtext to the reactions people had when I used the words “general surgery”. Sometimes there were looks of discomfort: the questioner scrunching up their nose as if there was a freshly opened box of blue cheese close by. Other times...
Stereotypes of physical appearance for women in medicine
By Olivia Charles, MS4 “Do you play basketball?” “What are you doing here?? You should be modeling!” “You’re wasting your height.” If I had a penny for every time someone said one of those lines to me during my journey through medical school, I could probably pay off my student loans entirely. I was always slightly taller than my peers since I was a kid, but I really had my growth spurt in high school. Being 6’ as a woman tends to attract a lot of attention–attention that for me was unwanted for a long time, particularly during my time in medical school. There has not been a single day where someone hasn’t asked me how tall I am, if I played sports, or what I'm doing in a hospital when I should be on a runway. While coming from a sincere place, these “compliments” always felt backhanded to me....
How the Joy of Volunteering Molds the Student Doctor
By Isabelle Casado Christmastime came around—I must have been about 8-years-old. My father had been collecting toys throughout the year. I remember watching him, month after month, quietly putting aside a little something here and a little something there. You can only imagine my excitement as an 8-year-old who thought she hit the ultimate gift lotto. Except—something better was soon about to happen. One evening, my father sat me down and said, ‘’Today, I am Santa’s helper. We’re going to an orphanage to deliver these gifts.” A few days before Christmas, we arrived at the orphanage. I remember seeing so many children around my age. We played, we danced, and we opened presents together. It wasn’t until years later that I truly understood the gift my father gave me that day: the joy of volunteering. Every year afterward, we volunteered together—at children’s hospitals, veteran centers, orphanages, and in various efforts...
Called to Step In
by Brett Weinstein *This story was shared with permission from involved parties. I didn’t wake up that morning expecting to deliver a baby in a car parking lot. I was a fourth-year medical student on a surgery sub-internship, just finishing a long day in the OR. When I walked through the parking lot, I noticed a couple frantically waving me down. The woman was in labor, her face clenched with pain, her husband pacing at her side, panic in his eyes. “Hi my name is Brett, I’m a medical student, can I take a look?” There was no time to wait for help. She was crowning. My heart pounded, but my feet moved before my mind caught up. I jumped into the backseat of their truck, barehanded, adrenaline roaring in my ears. For a moment, the world narrowed to just us – the mother, the baby, and me. Dark hair...
The Power of Social Media for Premedical and Medical Mentorship
By Ashley Cianchini In Medicine, mentors become the most important asset to thrive. The mentors we make along the way provide the most powerful insight on experiences they lived to keep us focused and motivated. Students without mentors often feel lost and have difficulty persevering through the biggest challenges in Medicine. Sadly, the traditional mentorship experience through shadowing, physician family members, or undergraduate experiences may often be inaccessible for some students, specifically underrepresented minorities and first-generation students. These students often become the first in their families to graduate high school or college. The dream of becoming a physician can feel extremely unachievable. Only 5.8% of the physicians in the United States are Latino, and only 5% are Black. This creates barriers for students with similar backgrounds, who struggle to identify with other physicians. Coming from a small school in the middle of Puerto Rico, it was difficult for me to...
Locked In: Training Under Pressure in the Dominican Republic’s Public Health System
Medicine in Latin America By Paria Remolina Medical training across Latin America often takes place in environments defined by limited resources, high patient volumes, and immense service demands. These challenges do not reflect a lack of knowledge or dedication but rather the difficult realities faced by public health systems stretched to their limits. In this piece, we explore the structure and expectations of surgical residency in the Dominican Republic, where young physicians must navigate not only the complexities of clinical care but also the pressures of a deeply hierarchical and demanding training environment. A Culture of Respect and Responsibility In the Dominican Republic, respect for seniority is central to medical culture. Attending physicians and fellows are regarded with deep formality, greeted with titles, and addressed with deference. It is expected to stand in their presence. These gestures reflect a longstanding tradition of respect for experience and authority. For residents, this...
