The UNSPOKEN RULES of Medical School

these are the unwritten and unspoken rules of medical school you don't want to miss this all right guys this is gonna be a fun video on my personal instagram which you should definitely follow if you aren't already i asked you guys for what you thought those rules were the unwritten and unspoken rules of med school and i'm gonna go through some of my favorite responses give you my take and then at the end also give you some unwritten and unspoken rules that i think are applicable and that you should definitely know about if you are

in med school or are planning to all right so first off from roshan patel 1999 always drop out and pursue youtube instead true that raj chua says always bring a cheap pen you are willing to lose because attendings or residents will never return it yes i would say the pilot g2 .38 pens which i've discussed before on this channel these are the favorite pens by most people in the hospital because they have a very fine tip so you can write small and fast because you need to write really quickly usually when you're in the hospital

and they're reliable they they write decently well they're cheap easily replaceable so i had a lot of black ones and blue ones if you want to find those specific pens i'll have a link down in the description but yes you're going to lose a lot of pens in med school it's just it happens opposite fight club rules first rule of med school tell everyone about med school that's pretty funny i guess there's a few ways to interpret this one would be that as a pre-med you're working really really hard to get into med school and

then you're so proud once you got in that you want to tell everyone hey guys i worked really hard look at this accomplishment i'm really proud of myself the other component is that when you're in med school it's all consuming your life is med school if you do sports and other things you can still do it like a little bit but most of your waking hours are going to be thinking doing obsessing studying all about med school and the human body don't answer a question that was asked to the resident yes so if you're a

third year fourth year med student on a rotation and you're in the operating room and let's say the attending asks the resident something do not blurt out the answer even if you know it that is very disrespectful you're not gonna win any friends or any favors in doing that you know let them answer always think of your behavior in a third year or fourth year clerkship rotation through the lens of am i making anyone else look bad because you don't want to do that uh i don't even i don't even know man looks like you're

having a good time in med school though don't around wasting precious time every hour matters when studying in medical school true that i mean don't be a robot but in med school you are going to be much more aware of how you're spending every moment because you have fewer moments to waste free time is a scarce resource and it's a good life skill i mean sure you don't want it to be that way for the rest of your life but if you approach it in the right way you'll actually learn a lot of good skills

with time management and productivity in medical school especially if you force yourself to you know try to be at the top of your class or take on other responsibilities if you're trying to start a business or or whatever it's one of those things where it's what you make of it and sure you can be stressed out and be miserable or you can see the silver lining and look at the skills that you can learn and develop don't make the resident slash intern look made in front of seniors i think maybe they meant bad or something

but yeah this kind of goes back to the the other point about always pay attention to how others are looking based on your behavior you don't want to make anyone else look bad the senior's always right no matter what i disagree with this there are going to be certain institutions that a little bit more old school and traditional where the hierarchy is more important you have to say sir and ma'am to everyone who's above you which i was doing at the beginning of med school and it kind of depends on on where you're at so

at the navy balboa yes i'm gonna be saying yes sir no sir and ma'am and all that stuff but at a lot of institutions on the west coast where things are more casual and people aren't dressed up and super proper then a lot of times they'd be like are you military like why are you calling me sir are you calling me man this is weird but at most places no i would not say the seniors are always right there was this really cool story from was it outliers by malcolm gladwell one of the books i

read where they were talking about how in certain airlines i think it was like a korean airline the co-pilot was not to question the pilot and that actually resulted in a in a strange dynamic where if things were dangerous the core pilot didn't feel comfortable raising their concerns to the pilot and then you got accidents crashes and bad things so similar lessons have been learned in medicine and in medicine like in time out or in the operating room there's very much an emphasis on actually speaking out if you think there is something that's not safe

even if you are the lowly med student or you're not the most senior person in the room eat when you can sleep when you can don't mess with the pancreas true words so i think that came from house of god and it refers to your surgery rotation don't get a girlfriend during medical school seriously don't i disagree with this i think everyone is different and depending on where your own personal development and your readiness for a relationship is being in a relationship may actually be useful and i know for me i got in a relationship

the end of my first year it was definitely a very large net positive during my medical experience for sure absolutely and i talked a little bit about dating and med school and those lessons that i've learned in my dating playlist learn to read the room and understand when it's appropriate to ask questions absolutely in the classroom this isn't as important because it's a classroom you ask questions there are moments in the hospital where you should not be asking questions if you're in the operating room and things are really tense and it's like hitting the fan

moment then no you should not be asking questions let let the people handle the situation and just try to be helpful and if you know a an attending is talking to the patient and it's like a deep heavy you know conversation which sometimes happens talking about outcomes talking about bad news then yeah it's not the time to pipe in with your need to learn you can do that after the conversation and this is more just like general social skills more than anything else first rule about fight club is to not talk about fight club that's

interesting that that's the complete opposite of the uh the first one that we went over hierarchy unfortunately trumps patient care so shut up unless you're the attending i disagree with that as i spoke about previously about the seniors always being right success is despite admin not because of admin so this is pretty funny with any field the administration and kind of the um the bureaucratic stuff tends to be a detriment for the most part at least for the people in it it feels that way i don't think that's necessarily unique to medicine or medical school

i think it's it probably applies to most fields actually asking others uninvitedly what percent do they get on exams and quizzes etc don't do this who cares man just stay in your lane work hard try to improve from how you perform the last test improve your study strategies experiment do all that stuff but how other people are doing like who cares you know what the class averages you know what the max is you know what the min is or what the fail or the pass line is rather so just try to do well yourself looking

out for one another i like this this is wholesome i think a lot of schools that are pass fail including my school which was pass fail the pre-clinical years and the clinical years it's graded i think um it's more conducive when you have a past field curriculum to be more collaborative not to worry about like oh is that gonna do better than me on the cardio block exam and then that's gonna ruin my chances for getting aoa or whatever actually my school didn't even have aoa so yeah look out for one another it's gonna bring

you together it's gonna just be a better atmosphere and you definitely want that when you're working really hard to med school to never use technology in front of high and senior professors doctors this is a good one this is a really good one i remember in my third year i actually specifically bought an ipad mini because if you're on your third year clerkship and you're walking around the hospital studying looking up relevant information on up to date or whatever other resource with your phone it looks bad i actually remember a resident pointing out a student

that was just leaning on a wall during rounds it was internal medicine so we were rounding for hours leaning on a wall and looking kind of casual on their phone they could have been studying but it looked like they were texting or being on instagram facebook whatever and it's not a good look because a lot of your clerkship grade is a subjective evaluation from your seniors so get an ipad mini or another tablet device a small tablet device that you can put in your white coat pocket that when you use makes you seem studious and

professional and hard working which i think is hilarious because the truth is you can still text from your ipad you can still go on instagram from your ipad you can still mess around from your ipad but the actual optics of it are important and that's for better or for worse i think mostly for worse but because of that you want to be careful using your phone in particular in front of your your seniors on clerkships yeah so don't use your phone because objects matter and be careful about that the best wellness is doing well in

classes i don't know if i agree with that i think prioritizing class performance at the expense of other things in your life is not wellness that's the opposite of wellness that's having an unhealthy relationship with your performance in class actually you should be okay finding the optimal balance for yourself where you do well enough in class that you're happy and that it will bring you closer towards your career goals which would be relevant to what you're mashing into for residency while still having a personal life exercise eating healthy sleeping enough all that stuff leave when

given the option to leave or stay i'm actually curious what you guys think so let me know with a comment specifically what you think about when a resident tells you as a medicine hey if you want to go home now because i would say for most of the time it's totally fine go ahead do it whatever but there are i feel depends on the personality again most of the time it's really fun to leave but certain personalities they want to see what you're made of they want to see how hard working are you are you

gonna come before everyone and stay after everyone how much do you want to become a ex you know orthopedic surgeon plastic surgeon whatever and it is a little bit of these mind games which is so silly let's be real it's so silly but you're gonna have to feel it out i'll probably actually receive some some hate for saying this because most people are like oh you should just totally leave it's silly that you know the residents and attendees they don't care i mean from my experience in residency and stuff and even as a med student

and just observing these things i would say usually people don't care but certain specialties and certain characters are going to care more about it and they they are willing to play these mind games all right so a few that i want to add these are just the first things that are coming to mind one thing is when you're on your clerkship rotations they have call rooms and at some institutions at some hospitals the call rooms will have a lock on it and at other places they won't at my hospital what we did is we took

one of those really small square towels and then you hang it on the handle outside the door so that people know that it's occupied someone else is using it because the last thing you want when you're in the middle of a call night and trying to get a couple hours of sleep is to be woken up by someone else walking in and turning on the lights another one i'm going to say is because med school classes are so small they're usually like 80 100 150 maybe 200 somewhere more but tends to be very small classes

it's not uncommon for them to be more gossip than what you're used to in college because usually college campuses are much larger and you get lost in all that but because everyone knows everyone everyone just starts talking about other people's business it's almost like high school gossip in a way which yeah that's not a pleasant thing stay out of it you want to get caught up in the drama and he said she said whatever try to stay in your lane try not to cause any commotion don't stir up nonsense just do your work get along

with people don't gossip it'll just make your life way more complicated another one is on rotations don't bring down other students don't bring out other people it just makes you look bad people can see it a mile away i know when i first started my third year clerkships i was on internal medicine the student i was rotating with she'd be like reading about my patients that when the attendant asked me like she would like blurt out the answer that doesn't make you look good it makes like it just causes tension it makes you look like

you're playing these games don't do that no one likes that oh another one how can i forget this definitely subscribe and like all of the videos on the medical insiders and chemical youtube channels because that stuff is gold hashtag unbiased another one would be to avoid talking about finances in med school you're gonna have most classmates who are taking out substantial amounts of loans and you're gonna have a small proportion although at my school it was actually a substantial number who don't have to take out any loans and that's usually because their parents are helping

pay the bills so if you're a student that needs to take out loans and your friend shares hey i didn't take out any loans my parents helped me then that student may feel a little bit resentful but on the other hand that student that doesn't have to take out any loans may feel almost guilty that oh hey my friend here needs to take out loans and i got it easy and you know it can just kind of change the dynamic cause a little bit of resentment people making underhand comments i think it's usually best to

just avoid talking finances at least like specific numbers as they relate to yourself i think talking about financial principles sound financial behaviors like living within your means and not spending extravagantly because a lot of people in med school they'll actually justify silly financial decisions like buying some crazy expensive gadget like ah this is just a drop in the bucket this three thousand dollar gaming pc ah doesn't matter it doesn't matter especially when you add the interest that's going to be accruing for the next several years until you pay off that loan for the most part

avoid talking specifics it's just gonna it's just gonna complicate your life this is one that i don't think is universal but i think is very helpful when you're in the hospital be productive as often as you can because when you're in the hospital when you're in the operating room when you're in the clinic you're not gonna be able to relax unwind rejuvenate feel great and therefore it's better to use that time productively when i had down time in the clinic or wherever i'd be doing my flash cards or i'd be studying or if i really

was feeling fried you know mentally then i would pick up a suturing kit or tie some knots on my scrub the loop for like you know tying up tightening around your waist and i would just try to be productive in every moment so that when i went home i could minimize the number of hours i had to spend practicing my suturing or studying and i could just do a little bit of studying eat some food get a workout in and go to sleep i'm trying to think if there's anything else i'm sure there is i'm

sure like five more will come to me as soon as i stop recording this video but if you guys have any that you think i missed please do leave a comment down below i love hearing from you guys and if you enjoyed this video then check out my dating playlist or this video here much love and i'll see you guys there [Music] you