Please do not feel compelled to answer all questions in a descriptive paragraph. I recommend picking a theme and then taking your own angle on it. You are welcome to write on as many topics as you like.
Childhood dreams
Some people felt a call to medicine from a tender age. Others would never have imagined standing where they are today, stethoscope in hand, white coat lightly pressed. For some, the path was straight: they simply stuck to their childhood dreams. For others, the journey was windy, meandering from one profession to another, until they, sometimes unexpectedly, found medicine. What path brought you to medicine? Was medicine your dream or one passed on to you from another?
Sojourner
The pursuit of dreams often leads us far beyond comfort and country. We leave our homes to lands near and far to start medical school or residency, and while there, repeatedly uproot ourselves as we move between rotations or interviews. How far have you traveled for medicine? How do you navigate the constant disorientation that medicine sometimes induces? How do you interact with your new environments and what insights have you gleaned as an outsider to these spaces? In what ways have you been able to create a sense of home on your sojourns?
Firsts
Whether it’s delivering your first baby or your first overnight shift, medical training offers an array of firsts. But novelty wears off very quickly and the magic (or agony) of once-special moments is soon lost. What were the first few days and months of medical school or residency like? What emotions punctuated your early days? How did the realities of being in medical training corroborate or contrast with your expectations? What first-time events or conversations made an impression on you?
Mistakes & Nadirs
“To err is human,” the old proverb starts. What mistakes have you made in your training? How have you dealt with guilt about those moments, especially when the outcomes have seemed unforgivable? What have your lowest points looked like? What did hitting rock bottom do to you? Are you still there?
Islands, and the bridges between
The clichés are endless: “No (wo)man is an island,” “It takes a village,” “Love is all you need.” But isolation is a reality medical trainees often face. People feel alone and disconnected from family and friends, and sometimes find it difficult to rebuild their support systems in their new environments. How do you deal with the isolation that can come with medical training? Have you had to build new support systems in medical training? How have you balanced parenting and medical training? How do you find or keep love in medical training? What happens when you lose it? Do you find yourself restricting yourself from certain roles and relationships because of your training? How do you navigate the reality that the career you have chosen, will stretch relationships you care about?
Coping
Medical training is a marathon, with numerous trials dotting its course. Because human beings are highly adaptable, trainees find ways to survive, and even thrive, under the worst of conditions. In medicine, myriad stresses arise on both mind and body from dealing with human fragility daily or with the reality of onerous obligations, like student loans, for example. What has kept you going? What pressures have you felt in medical training and what mechanisms—positive or otherwise—have made you able to withstand these? How have your coping mechanisms changed over time and how do you see them changing in the future? Has faith or spirituality played a part in your journey? What was the most difficult adjustment you made in medical training and in what areas do you still feel off-kilter? With all the responsibilities you have to balance, do you fear there is a breaking point?
Pulseless
What was your first experience with death in medical training? How did it feel? How did you react? How has your reaction to death changed over time?
Prodigal
People chart different courses in medicine. Some courses are fairly linear, others are labyrinthine, complete with elaborate detours. These detours themselves can take on many forms, whether it’s taking time off to raise a child or taking a leave of absence for other personal reasons or getting a second (third, fourth) degree. Sometimes even, a trainee decides to leave medicine altogether. What inspired your detour? What was it like living away from the medical world and what insights did you glean about yourself and the world? Upon your return to medicine, what did you notice? For those on permanent detours, when did you start considering leaving medicine and how did you finally make the decision? What are you doing now? How have your feelings about your decision changed over time?
Physician, heal thyself
Medical professionals are tasked with alleviating suffering in others. Our gaze is constantly outwards. But what happens when the healer is broken? How do you keep looking outwards, when inside is riddled with grief from the loss of a loved one, disappointment, or with actual disease? How has personal tragedy caused you to look inwards? In what ways have you prohibited the inward gaze just so the outside can thrive? In what ways do you think medical education or the medical system is ailing and what about the culture of medicine has persisted unchallenged for decades but needs to be questioned?
Adult dreams
Time is an asset, one that changes your perspectives and priorities and gives you a wealth of experiences to base decisions on. How is the person you are today different from the person you were prior to medical training? And now that you’re in medicine, with a more nuanced view of the profession, what do you see in your future? How do these dreams compare to the ones you had prior to entering medicine? Where do you hope the medical community is five, 10, 50 years from now? What do you want your legacy to be?
Self doubt
Caring for patients is a heavy responsibility and medical trainees become even more aware of this as training progresses. Many become acquainted with the limitations of their minds and bodies and consequently, self-doubt becomes a steady companion. Have you struggled with self-doubt or felt like you were not good enough? Do you wonder if medicine really is the career path for you? What internal factors cause you to doubt yourself? Which interactions with patients or other medical professionals (and their biases) have created or heightened these factors?