One of the most difficult things that I have had to manage so far is figuring out how to cover my hair while I see patients and work in the lab. Expensive wigs and falls are not really made for getting blood or vomit on them, and they have these pieces of hair that are forever getting in your face. They may wear a little better in the lab, except that I experiment with mice and so I would have a wig that perpetually smells of the mouse house. Eew.
In the lab, it's a pretty solvable problem. I can wear a hat, a mitpachat, a bandana you name it. Nobody cares. It keeps my hair covered without obstructing my vision or getting in my face all the time. In the hospital, you have to be more careful. Many patients would not appreciate their Dr. wearing a newsboy cap. It makes them feel like you are unprofessional, on your way out and have no time for them. However I have found that you can easily get away with wearing a bandana. Many of the non Jewish nurses and staff wear them to keep the hair out of their face. You want to be careful though. If you are the type to not let a single centimeter of hair peek out from thebandana in the front then this is not the look for you. Your patients and colleagues will wonder why their Dr., who clearly has cancer, is walking around treating other people instead of resting up and taking care of their own health issues. Plus if you work with cancer patients they wonder how you can have cancer that requires chemo to the point of making you loose your hair and yet look so healthy and fit.
The solution for many female, religious, married physicians that I have spoken too seems to be the ponytail sheitel. They are not as super expenssive as full wigs, they keep hair off your face and they look natural. If you are someone who finds wigs hot and itchy I am afraid this will not solve that issue.
Right now, I'm a happy lab rat with a stack of about 50 different bandanas that match all my outfits. They're cute and functional and I can throw them in the wash with the rest of my clothes. I love them.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
funding - how can ou live as a student for so long?
MD-PhD programs are unique in that they require student to remain in school for 7-9 years. Once you graduate the idea is for you to become a translational researcher. Not exactly a high paid field. How do you manage this? Well, unlike regular medical students most MD-PhD's are given some sort of funding. However, not all programs are created equal and not all offer the same sort of funding. Always make sure you understand your funding before you sign on to join a program!
Medical Students typically pay high tuition and most take out loans to do so. There are a few excellent scholarships but they are few and far between and you cannot count on obtaining one. Medical students should make sure they are comfortable with the financial aid department at their school and fully understand all loans and repayment options. Once they exit medical school they can usually defer their loans repayment through residency (interest variable depending on the type of loan and consolidation you do), some like to pay as much as they can off as soon as possible. After that they enter the workforce and repay those loans as fast as possible. There are some loan repayment programs for people who work in under served areas or at the NIH. These usually do not cover all your loans but are a great relief as people who enter those professions are usually not receiving a large salary. Not having had to deal with this sort of thing, I do not know all the details.
The best type of MD-PhD funding is the type found at my institution and at all other MSTPrograms (more on the initials in later posts). Your tution is waived for all years by the school and you receive a stipend of about 25,000 - 30,000 a year. Your health insurance is covered as well and sometimes you get an aditional allowance for travel to conferences or lab materials. If you drop the program you are not responsible to pay back tuition, however this is generally considered a very terrible thing to do and the "two and screw" (get two years of medical school for free and then drop the program before the PhD) is considered the most vile thing anyone can do. You are cheating someone who would have become a medical researcher out of their spot in the program and wasting tax payer money. Most people who choose to drop the program do so for compelling personal reasons. Dropping or not finishing is extremely rare at my institution. (drop rate is another great thing to ask about when interviewing at programs). Sounds great right? Well, don't get ahead of yourself. Your MD classmates will be in their well paying jobs by the time you hit residency and you don't actully gain much by not going the MD route with loans. This is not a great way to get a fre MD.
Other non MSTPrograms are not required to follow this funding plan. The next most common plan is one in which your tution is waved and you receive a stipend (variable based on program) however you are responsible for back tuition should you drop. Not a terrbile option. Just check that stipend levels are enough to live by in the area.
Rarely a program will tell you to pay for the first two years of medical school upfront or with loans and upon completion of your PhD you will receive this money back. They have placed it in a seecure account for you. They do this because they see it as an incentive to complete the program. I would avoid this type of program if you have other options. If you must, at least ask them how they plan on handling any interest accumulated on your loans while you are in graduate school.
Then there are the programs that have no funding at all. This is extremely rare in the US. It does happen occasionally in Canada and other countries. There is significant hardship involved in this and I would suggest that if this is your only option you should consider not doing the dual degree or doing them separately with a few years of working and cash accumulation in between. Unless of course you have an independent unlimited cash supply.
Medical Students typically pay high tuition and most take out loans to do so. There are a few excellent scholarships but they are few and far between and you cannot count on obtaining one. Medical students should make sure they are comfortable with the financial aid department at their school and fully understand all loans and repayment options. Once they exit medical school they can usually defer their loans repayment through residency (interest variable depending on the type of loan and consolidation you do), some like to pay as much as they can off as soon as possible. After that they enter the workforce and repay those loans as fast as possible. There are some loan repayment programs for people who work in under served areas or at the NIH. These usually do not cover all your loans but are a great relief as people who enter those professions are usually not receiving a large salary. Not having had to deal with this sort of thing, I do not know all the details.
The best type of MD-PhD funding is the type found at my institution and at all other MSTPrograms (more on the initials in later posts). Your tution is waived for all years by the school and you receive a stipend of about 25,000 - 30,000 a year. Your health insurance is covered as well and sometimes you get an aditional allowance for travel to conferences or lab materials. If you drop the program you are not responsible to pay back tuition, however this is generally considered a very terrible thing to do and the "two and screw" (get two years of medical school for free and then drop the program before the PhD) is considered the most vile thing anyone can do. You are cheating someone who would have become a medical researcher out of their spot in the program and wasting tax payer money. Most people who choose to drop the program do so for compelling personal reasons. Dropping or not finishing is extremely rare at my institution. (drop rate is another great thing to ask about when interviewing at programs). Sounds great right? Well, don't get ahead of yourself. Your MD classmates will be in their well paying jobs by the time you hit residency and you don't actully gain much by not going the MD route with loans. This is not a great way to get a fre MD.
Other non MSTPrograms are not required to follow this funding plan. The next most common plan is one in which your tution is waved and you receive a stipend (variable based on program) however you are responsible for back tuition should you drop. Not a terrbile option. Just check that stipend levels are enough to live by in the area.
Rarely a program will tell you to pay for the first two years of medical school upfront or with loans and upon completion of your PhD you will receive this money back. They have placed it in a seecure account for you. They do this because they see it as an incentive to complete the program. I would avoid this type of program if you have other options. If you must, at least ask them how they plan on handling any interest accumulated on your loans while you are in graduate school.
Then there are the programs that have no funding at all. This is extremely rare in the US. It does happen occasionally in Canada and other countries. There is significant hardship involved in this and I would suggest that if this is your only option you should consider not doing the dual degree or doing them separately with a few years of working and cash accumulation in between. Unless of course you have an independent unlimited cash supply.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
The MD-PhD program timeline
In order to understand where I am right now in my MD-PhD training, you need to understand how MD-PhD programs work. For those of you considering this career option it is good to get a feel for the time commitment involved and the way in which you go about obtaining the dual degree. While a few people do the degrees independently of one another, this usually wastes time. Programs that offer both degrees attempt to streamline the process as much as possible. There are also usually financial benefits to choosing to obtain both degrees as part of a dual degree program (I will discuss those in another post).
Although there are slight variations between programs, the basic schedule is as follows:
Summer before medical school : Research rotation in a lab of your choice
First year of medical school: exactly the same as your MD only peers. Sometimes one or two graduate courses are thrown in.
Summer after first year of medical school: Research rotation in lab of your choice
Second year of medical School: Same as MD only peers. Take USMLE step 1 (first of several licenising exams)
Summer after second year of medical school: Research rotation in lab of your choice
Year 3-6: Join at one of the labs in which you rotated and perform thesis research. Time varies but the goal is for a 3-4 year thesis
Return to Medical School for one and a half years to complete MD degree.
At this point you are awarded the MD-PhD and you have several options. Most choose to do a standard residency, or a 'fast track' research oriented residency. A small minority of students who do not want the option of having a clinical career go straight to a postdoc.
All in all it's 7-8 years before you even hit residency. Time commitment? heavy. But in the end you can speak two languages, you're an MD and a PhD. You can bridge two worlds. Is it for everyone? Definitely not. But for some of us, we can't imagine our lives any other way.
So where am I? Year three. About to select a thesis lab. I got married in middle of second year and I'm beginning to consider starting a family. To complicate things, I married an MD-PhD classmate. It's difficult sometimes to be in a household of two students,but as I said before, even in the toughest of times, I can't imagine it any other way. For one thing, I never would have met my husband. For another, I would never have been satisfied with my career. I would hate to go through life thinking I could have done something better, something more. So when I'm rushing out of work to cook for shabbos or puzzling over life on a two-student budget I just remind myself that in any other situation I would be wasting my potential and not following my dreams. These are the choices I made and I am proud of them. They are not the right choices for everyone, and hopefully this blog will provide you with more information to base your decision on.
Although there are slight variations between programs, the basic schedule is as follows:
Summer before medical school : Research rotation in a lab of your choice
First year of medical school: exactly the same as your MD only peers. Sometimes one or two graduate courses are thrown in.
Summer after first year of medical school: Research rotation in lab of your choice
Second year of medical School: Same as MD only peers. Take USMLE step 1 (first of several licenising exams)
Summer after second year of medical school: Research rotation in lab of your choice
Year 3-6: Join at one of the labs in which you rotated and perform thesis research. Time varies but the goal is for a 3-4 year thesis
Return to Medical School for one and a half years to complete MD degree.
At this point you are awarded the MD-PhD and you have several options. Most choose to do a standard residency, or a 'fast track' research oriented residency. A small minority of students who do not want the option of having a clinical career go straight to a postdoc.
All in all it's 7-8 years before you even hit residency. Time commitment? heavy. But in the end you can speak two languages, you're an MD and a PhD. You can bridge two worlds. Is it for everyone? Definitely not. But for some of us, we can't imagine our lives any other way.
So where am I? Year three. About to select a thesis lab. I got married in middle of second year and I'm beginning to consider starting a family. To complicate things, I married an MD-PhD classmate. It's difficult sometimes to be in a household of two students,but as I said before, even in the toughest of times, I can't imagine it any other way. For one thing, I never would have met my husband. For another, I would never have been satisfied with my career. I would hate to go through life thinking I could have done something better, something more. So when I'm rushing out of work to cook for shabbos or puzzling over life on a two-student budget I just remind myself that in any other situation I would be wasting my potential and not following my dreams. These are the choices I made and I am proud of them. They are not the right choices for everyone, and hopefully this blog will provide you with more information to base your decision on.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Who are you and why am I reading your Blog?
If you've stumbled upon this blog you are probably wondering who I am and why my life is blog worthy. The truth is I never intended to blog about my life or my career. I had your typical frum girl from Brooklyn upbringing, went to a good Bais Yaakov, played the shidduch game etc. I've just always had a little extra ambition and a 'don't tell me what I can and cannot do' attitude. This lead me to the field of science and medicine.
After high school instead of heading to seminary in Israel I went to CUNY and attended a NY based seminary at the same time (all ready out of the box as most girls from my class went to Touro, did correspondence or stopped their educations at high school). Somewhere along the way, perhaps because I was excited by the challenge, I decided to pursue MD-PhD training. Why I chose to subject myself to that many years of schooling and how I successfully got into one of the countries top programs from a CUNY school are matters for another post. What concerns this post is that almost immediately I started receiving e-mail from young Jewish girls interested in the sciences but unsure if this was the right path for them and their families.
The questions were many and varied. Some wanted to know what GPA you need to get into an MD-PhD program. Others wanted to know if pursuing an MD degree would make them persona non grata on the shidduch scene. Still others wanted to know if they should be MD's PhD's or both like me. While I was happy to answer their e-mils I realized that these pleas for information were a sign of a more serious problem. Girls in the frum community do not have many professional role models to look up to. I decided to start this blog to help spread information about women in science to the Jewish community.
This blog is not meant to recruit you to a career in science and medicine. It is merely here to give you a look at what the day to day life of an MD-PhD student is like. Many of the questions I receive have to do with personal lives and family choices. Hopefully, reading this blog will give you a better perspective on what it is like to be frum and an MD-PhD student.
If you are a frum woman in the sciences who maintains a blog, I would love to link your blog. Please drop me a line so I can include you in my blogroll.
If you are a Jewish girls interested in learning more about being a scientist or doctor please stay tuned to the blog! Feel free to post your questions in the comments section. Or you can always e-mail me with more personal questions at seminarytoscientist@gmail.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)