TEN FACTORS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A SPECIALTY The proliferation of specialties (and subspecialties) means that every physician practices a different type of medicine. Even within the same specialty, no two doctors are alike. Faced with all this diversity, how do medical students commit to a single specialty? Many go through a “process of ‘trying…
PIONEER OF MODERN SURGERY The pioneer of modern surgery, known in the West as “Abulcasis”, Abu al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi was not just a pioneer in surgical innovation; he was also a great teacher whose medical texts had shaped the European surgical procedures up until the Renaissance and later. His most famous piece of work was the…
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PREPARED You may have heard the Boy Scout motto, “Always be prepared!” I recently learned the importance of this motto in the life of a healthcare provider. I hope this experience will not only serve as a motivation for you to live your dream of becoming a physician, but also the…
Want to study better, not harder? Here’s how with spaced repetition Even in a problem-based learning (PBL) environment, such as that used by UHSA, there are still things you just have to memorize. Welcome to medical school! But when it comes to memorizing information, the age-old approach of reading the textbook multiple times over doesn’t…
Great Reads Inspire Great Lives As many of you know, my desire to be involved in medicine dates to when I was quite young, and was highly influenced by my family doc as well as my human physiology teacher in high school. I was also influenced by a number of books I read along the…
A Fractured Ankle I was sitting in one of Dr Haddock’s examination rooms waiting for him to review my x-ray. I was nervous. Four weeks previously I had been struck in the right ankle by a midfielder while playing high school soccer. Being the manly man I was, I had walked around for nearly a…