Pranab Chatterjee’s TLS Ten Question Challenge
Pranab Chatterjee, a final year medical student at the Kolkata medical school in the West Bengal University of Health sciences, India, has accepted the TLS challenge to take the 10-point medical school questionnaire. The responses are not compulsory reading, but you may find it useful if you do! And you make want to take up the challenge yourself. For more information, please look here.
Pranab - TLS 10 questions
Here are Pranab’s responses:
1. Why did you decide to study medicine?
In India, the stereotype for students with good academic backgrounds is to go into either medicine or engineering. I would be lying if I said that it was not a bit of this stereotype that propelled me into medicine. But also, having seen the kind of social respect, economic prosperity and professional freedom that doctors enjoy, I had been lured to this field. All professions contribute to the growth and prosperity of a nation, and make a difference to the life of people in some way or the other. However, I realized, after seeing my uncle (a GP) that it is the easiest for a doctor to make a positive change in someone’s life in course of everyday activities. This was the final touch that gave me the motivation to move into medicine.
2. What profession would you be in if you weren’t in Medicine?
This is a rather difficult question in that I have not pondered on this much. The entrance examination to the Medicine program (analogous to MCAT) is an intensely and insanely competitive one. Therefore one always had to have alternate career plans ready. Although I never gave those plans much thought, I believe if it was not Medicine, I would most probably be in Biochemistry or Biotechnology. Something related to Medicine and with a possibility of doing research to impact the medical specialties.
3. What is your biggest motivation?
Personally, I believe that motivation for me has morphed from one form to the other as the challenges shifted forms themselves.
In the first couple of years in medical school, when the challenge was to establish oneself as a credible student, the motivation was pretty evident. Yes, I may have been a little guilty of being a gunner in those days. But as the years melted away and the clinical rotations started, I realized that there was much more to Medicine than what one learnt off the books. Man himself, with his frailties and fatalities was a wonder that medical school was slowly but surely unfurling. Through interactions with patients, peer and preceptors, life in all its colors is now opening up before me now. And now, my biggest motivation remains to find a way to unravel the secrets of this wonderfully oiled machine that is so simple, so uniform, yet so different! Whether they be in the body or in the mind, how the same system works in one and breaks down in another intrigues me. Probably a little amorphous and abstract, I realize, but nothing pleases me more than a clinical encounter with a patient…
4. What are you most interested in so far and why?
Every year of medical school brings a different flavor to the buffet. The first couple of years I had been mesmerized by the biochemistry, physiology and pathology of the human body and was immensely motivated to go into basic science oriented research. But when the clinics started I realized that the joy of human interaction, of being able to help them actively was a heady feeling. So it is no surprise that I am a total Internal Medicine junkie. I also am intrigued by the impact of medical research and progress on human life and quality of life in general. From this stems my liking of Global Medicine, Public Health and Multidisciplinary or Translational research.
I believe I am a little intoxicated by the power of medicine to affect human lives and my choices reflect the same as well!
5. What has been your most difficult module so far and why?
I believe it was the module of Microbiology-Pharmacology-Pathology which comprises of the Second MBBS curriculum which I found difficult to cope with due to a number of reasons. First, because a decade-long friend slipped into depression and committed suicide, bringing to the surface the numerous insecurities that medical school spawns in our minds. Second, because of a skewed academic curriculum that discouraged lateral, logical thinking and encouraged (often, actively) a rote-learning system which I refused to bow down to (but of course, I had to, eventually). Third, because it was the year when my first brush with the ever complicated matters of the heart happened, which eventually left me wiser, but made me pay the costs in many other ways!
6. Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
a. The wishful thinking version:
I would like to thank the committee for considering me for this esteemed award that joins me with the legions of legends… blah blah blah.
That’s how the thank you speech starts in my head when I land the (Ig)Nobel Prize for inventing (place ever-changing earth-shattering idea here).
b. The perhaps slightly more realistic version:
Working at a tertiary academic medical center in Internal Medicine. With an active research life, churning out quality results. Teaching. And becoming a respected member of the profession.
7. What is the most memorable positive moment in your medical studies so far?
There are several moments when the pain medical school puts one through seem worth it all. For me some of the best were getting my first student research grant, diagnosing and reviving my first hypoglycemic patient in the ER, being a part in diagnosing a child with myoclonic jerks and of course, meeting the occasional patient whose resolution to beat the odds remains an inspiration. But some of the best memories remain in the Labor room, delivering the pregnant ladies and seeing their ecstasy at the end of a tremendously painful experience. This has given me the fortitude of bearing the pain life throws at me!
8. What is the worst horror story in your medical studies to date?
I guess having a patient die on us is like a rite of passage. The first patient who died on the unit I was on was absolutely the most horrific experience till date.
He had come in following an AMI and had already gone into shock, and could not be revived despite the best of our last ditch efforts. And then communicating the news to the family. I felt that this is the most difficult job we have to do.
9. Can you share some things that you wish that someone had told you before you applied to study medicine?
1. This is a long and arduous journey and it does not end when you get the degree. That is merely the beginning.
2. The medical education has not changed with the times. And the orthodox ideas that ran the system half a century ago are still deeply entrenched.
3. People do not like it much if you try to change things around!
4. Life is difficult, and doctors get to know of all the various forms in which human suffering manifests – whether it be in the body or in the mind – and if one is not strong in body and mind, it is difficult to cope with that.
10. Can you share some tips/advice for others
a. Wanting to study medicine:
1. Prepare for the toughest entrance exam
2. See answers to Question 9 above!
b. Already studying Medicine:
1. Do remember to get your noses out of the text books occasionally and enjoy life!