If this is actually produced, I predict the show will be a new favorite amusement of HMS students poking at inaccuracies. This place looks nothing like our school! They don't have enough bags under their eyes! We don't sleep around that much! (as far as I know)

This may be indicative of an oversaturation of medical shows - ER, House, Gray's Anatomy, Private Practice, Scrubs - such that the process of becoming a doctor would actually be appealing. Who wouldn't want to see a version of the venerable Dr. House nervously botch his first patient interview?

I'm interested in seeing how they dramatize what issues they think medical students cope with. I also wonder how much of the medical education they will be able to show - dissection of a human cadaver in anatomy is one of the hallmarks of medical education, but is this even palatable to audiences?

As I've mentioned before, these shows have a responsibility to portray the field accurately as they mold public opinion. Portraying medical students as callous and jaded would almost certainly be detrimental to the patient-doctor relationship.

Some potential plot points:

-Student overwhelmed by the deluge of medical education resorts to Attention Deficit Disorder medications to catch up.

-Student brings emotions into the clinic (e.g. just had a bad breakup) and makes poor decisions.

-Leading to the grand finale when a medical student makes a mistake that costs a patient - or another cast member - his or her life.

The primary goal of the program is to train physician-scientists. Ideally, the graduates will both manage their own laboratories while seeing patients, although some graduates tend to go entirely into medical practice or research. A large component of what we learn is therefore cutting-edge research in the field. Each week in all our classes we will probably have at least four scientists in the field explaining their work and the state of the field.

This means that what we learn is not directly relevant for medical practice or for our medical licensing exam, but the point is instead to train a system of thinking about medical science.

Within the rest of the medical school, the HST student is stereotyped as being nerdy, less attractive, and bookish. But this is OK, as we have fun stereotypes for the other programs as well.

• Anatomy - The human body - nerves, muscles, circulation - through dissection of a cadaver.
• Pathology - What tissues look like and what can go wrong.
• Immunology - The development and maintenance of the immune system to fight disease.
• Genetics - Survey of genetic disorders - that is, caused by mutations in specific genes.

The HST curriculum always has concurrent classes, while New Pathway tends to study one block at a time. For instance, they will study anatomy for several weeks everyday.

While we have more variety day to day, we have a larger time commitment - we spend between 9AM-6PM each day in class. This doesn't include the work we have to do at night after class.

It should be fun, but it's also daunting. A number of students here are worried about balancing personal life, classwork, and sleep. We'll see.

Me in a month?

I wanted to take this chance to reflect on case-based learning, the mainstay of New Pathway and most other medical schools in the country. A patient's clinical case is presented, usually with uncertainty about the underlying disease. Uncertain parts of the case - test results, symptoms, X-ray readings, family history - are split among students to research, and upon reconvening each student shares his research with everyone else. Gradually the case is clarified with help from a supervising group leader, usually a doctor.

For me, this system was inefficient for learning. An entire two-hour session could be distilled into a single sheet of paper that could be read in fifteen minutes. Our group would also often branch into unrelated tangents on minor details, bringing up interesting facts that were irrelevant to the case.

I am not suggesting that the problem-based learning model is without merit. The benefits of this system are clear - it resembles real clinical practice in that the patient's condition is often unknown and requires gradual steps to figure out. Furthermore,it encourages collaboration between students, building the type of collaborative spirit central to medical teams in hospitals.

Ultimately the question is whether medical school is about learning the facts or learning the skills of becoming a doctor. Of course, it should be about both. But in these cases, the only skills we practiced were researching a narrow part of the overall case and presenting information to other students, both of which you either already have or can develop quickly. Once these skills are developed, future cases become inefficient in the learning you do per amount of time.

I would rather first build a solid foundation of knowledge through efficient learning, then progress to case work when I am not as clueless.

Medical students - how do you feel about case based learning?

They're walking along chatting about their work when all of a sudden a man drifts by in the middle of the river, screaming for help. The doctors immediately spring into action, one doctor standing by the bank for support while the other dives into the river. He pulls the man, swims to shore, and they both climb out soaking wet.

The two doctors continue their stroll when a woman drifts by in the river again, just screaming for dear life. The doctors rush again, and they save the woman from drowning.

They walk further down the river until another man comes down the streaming river, at risk of drowning. One doctor immediately dives in, but this time the other doctor runs away up the river, inexplicably. The swimming doctor manages to save the man, and he waits by the side of the river for his friend to return.

When he does, the wet doctor asks, "Why in the world did you run away when I was trying to save him?"

The other doctor says, "I went upstream trying to see why so many people were falling in the river!"

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This is a cute story, but it also illustrates the multiple roles physicians can have in society. They can serve on the frontlines treating patients with what we currently know, or they can research the unknown about why diseases happen. Both are absolutely essential roles in  medicine.

At some schools, the white coat ceremony is a huge ordeal. Parents are invited, tents are raised, tears are released. My parents attended my brother's white coat ceremony two years earlier.

At Harvard Medical School it is a little less overstated. We have five societies - Cannon, Peabody, Holmes, and Castle (named after venerable doctors from Harvard and following the New Pathway curriculum) and HST, the program I am in (now named the London society after its founder).

Each society held its own white coat ceremony closed to parents, which meant a cozier atmosphere and less hoopla. The white coat ceremony is a symbolic gesture meant to emphasize the increasing responsibility of the medical student. But I'm not sure that I feel any different having received it since those responsibilities have weighed heavily in my mind.

Here is a picture taken by a classmate of mostly HST students with our esteemed pathologist and teacher, Rick Mitchell to the right. I am standing second from the right.

Will those smiles be replaced by weary, blank stares in the near future?

For the first two years of medical school, we take no courses together except for Introduction to the Profession, starting today and lasting for two weeks. The purpose of the course is to provide a relaxed introduction to coursework during which we learn to take vital signs, take a basic patient history, shadow doctors, and talk to patients.

HMS is one of the few schools that has a dual program like this, and I think it reflects its dual commitment to patient care and research well.