Work and Life Balance: Extracurricular Activities

As a medical student, many days are filled with studying and reviewing disorders and their treatments. However I was fortunate enough to explore my many interests outside of medicine.

1) One of my main passions is music. I’ve been playing flute and piano since I was 6 years old and minored in flute performance at my undergraduate institution. As a natural continuation of this, I joined the OSUMC orchestra as the flautist for 2 years. We played music every Thursday evening ranging from Christmas music to Classical and even movie soundtracks. It was an unforgettable experience where I made lots of friends, relieved some stress and also was able to share my talents with others during our seasonal concerts.

OSUMC orchestra

 

2) I also spent quality time with friends whether at home or at the OSU football games!

OH-IO  Home roommates

 

3) Spending time in nature with hikes to Hocking Hills and other parks helped me appreciate the world we are surrounded in and the wonderful friends who can accompany me during the journey.

hocking hills

 

4) Finally, I also hope to pursue some short missions work during my medical career and got to explore the possibilities when I visited the Global Missions Health Conference in Louisville, KY! I was amazed to see so many medical professionals who were passionate about missions work and this conference gave me many ideas about how I will carry out my medical practice in the future!

GMHC

I chose this collection of photos to demonstrate my strengths and interests that I’ve either discovered or cultivated during my four years in medical school. Through these activities, I also learned how to create an appropriate balance of personal and professional commitments. I will take the next steps to further developing this competency by continuing to pursue my passions outside of medicine during residency and beyond.

Professional Strengths and Weaknesses Reflection

 

Strengths-and-Weaknesses-Direction

I believe that my personal strengths are mainly in my enjoyment of listening to others and to be considerate and kind when forming relationships with other people. I also take responsibility for my actions and welcome feedback from others. Being a great listener will help me to be very receptive and empathetic towards patients’ concerns. In this way I could be a better medical student who can learn not only from lectures but also from the real life situations and concerns that patients will express. In addition, my strength in accepting input from others can help me greatly with interpersonal communication because this would be more conducive to successful teamwork in the future.

Besides my strengths, I also have areas that I would like to improve on. I believe my weakness lies in appropriate time management. Oftentimes when I was meeting patients for the first time in clinic, I had a hard time interrupting them and moving on with my questioning. I wanted to make sure the patients were able to express all of their concerns but at the same time I wanted to make sure that my history taking was comprehensive enough that I would not miss the diagnoses and risk giving mediocre health care. This delicate balance I believe is part of the art of medicine and one which I am still honing. I do enjoy listening to patients and really strive to be an advocate for them by hearing their stories and re-expressing their concerns to the rest of the team. However, I must realize that with the limited precious time that medical students and professionals have with our patients, I need to eventually switch from open-ended to more direct questions.

The above reflection was written in the beginning of medical school. Now as a fourth year, I believe my strengths remain the same and luckily I have not become less empathetic towards patients through the course of medical school. I chose this reflection for the competency of “practice-based and lifelong learning” as it discusses my strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore I was able to identify the role of a medical student and highlight the importance of interpersonal communication as a physician.

I will be developing this competency in the future by constantly reflecting on my strengths and weaknesses throughout my medical career.