 Alright guys, welcome back to the channel. Welcome to another episode of the TMJ show. Today we are answering a lot of great questions from one of our medical students on things like how to make yourself stand out, especially if you are in a situation where you're in a Caribbean medical school, how to stand out for more surgical procedural based skills like neurosurgery, as well as how to kind of keep up with patients and residents and physicians of different temperaments and how to make sure that you're ready to take care of people and work with people of various different types of personalities. Before we get into today's episode, if you want me to answer your own questions, just like I'm doing for one of our students today, all you have to do is go down to the link, find the Q&A link, and just submit your questions as well as your email and I'll send you a personalized response just like this one. Alright, so today we'll be answering questions from a medical student named Victor. And Victor has a lot of questions, so Victor first of all, thank you so much for submitting those. I'll answer as many as I can. Question number one is what tips and tricks that I have for first year students in the Caribbean. Now this is obviously a great question because in terms of order your ability to go through medicine, obviously going through an empty school and then a DO school makes your path into residency and finding the career path that you want to be a lot easier. But as we all have difficulties in our pre-med and our early kind of life as we're applying to medical school, whether it's MCAT or GPA, sometimes Caribbean school is the next best option for us. And so work with a lot of students who are in the Caribbean and honestly, you just understand that there's not that much difference in terms of the quality of students, but you do have to work an extra step harder just to get to the same part that some of your kind of domestic US medical school applicants are going to be. So in terms of tips and tricks, your first semester, I would really focus in on just honing in on how you study. You know, there's a lot of videos that we have for you on the MD journey on how to do that, but it really just simplifying how you study and find the most effective way to do that. Because then you can really get onto the next step, which is like your next six months, the latter part of your first year is to really devote starting to enhance your application for when it's time for you to apply to residency, start thinking about what kind of things you want to go into, whether it's surgery or something more medical or neurology, and then start doing research, start shadowing and really start getting those application things that really show any type of residency program, like, yeah, I went to the medical schools in the Caribbean, but that doesn't speak to the quality of applicant. You know, maybe I had some bumps on my way, but I'm still a great student. The school had just done a good job of teaching me the things that I knew to who to like study for a step on, etc. And really then have a list of things on your application to really show that like you clearly have what it takes to be a great dermatologist is great neurosurgeon. And so your school that you went to doesn't have an impact in terms of what residency program you'll go into. So the earlier you get your studying down, the more free time you'll have to really then start focusing on the things like research, community service, extracurriculars that really will matter more when it comes to applying for residency. Next question we have is what communication and social tips do I have in terms of interacting patients of different types of temperament? That's a good question because as an internal medicine physician, I deal with patients of all kinds, some patients who are really shy, some patients who are, let's just say not that way. And I think the best way to understand how to interact with patients of various different temperaments is just to understand that every patient has the same goal, which is they just want to be heard. So whether they don't speak enough or they speak too much, your main goal is to make sure that their information has been heard by you. If you go in with an objective for every patient, and it doesn't really matter if you consider the temperament of that patient, some interactions will go really well, because you just managed to gel really well with that patient and some not so much. And so for those patients who are a little bit more difficult, they're a little bit more rambunctious and how they talk, or maybe they're a little bit more skeptical or the medical like field in general, which I have, especially in the field of COVID now, or people just don't think the doctors are always out there for their best interests. And those situations, I always just have the patient tell me as much as they'd like about why they disagree with me, why they believe something else to be true. And I always ended by like, Oh, I can understand how you came to that conclusion. And then I was like, Well, can I share my perspective? Or can I share what I'd like to do for you today? Always feels like a team effort versus like me versus the patient. And so it doesn't matter what kind of temperament they have, whether it's somebody who is very aggressive and how they talk to doctors or somebody who is a little bit shy and reserved and doesn't like to open up as much. Because then if they can see you as a resource who's saying like, this person really wants to help me, I should do as much in my power from the patient's perspective to really go out of my way to share the things that they're asking. So you have a patient who's shy, if you can show them that you care by taking care of one small thing, and then asking them, what else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do? And every time you say that if there is something you can do, they're like, Well, this person's clearly asking me stuff. And they're able to take care of it as long as I'm able to tell them that takes care of the shy temperament. And if you have patients who are a little bit more aggressive, they calm down because they know you're on their side, they may not have to agree with you on everything. And likewise vice versa. But as long as you're on the same team saying, I want to make you feel better, what type of things can we get on the same page about and help them feel better. And then if there's something like for example, at the moment, I love for my patients obviously to get the COVID vaccine, some are a lot more aggressive in terms of denying it. And that's okay, there's a lot of misinformation out there. But if there's something small that can help them with, in the meantime, if they're having shortness of breath, how can I help them feel better in the short term? And saying, I still recommend the vaccine for you for x, y and z reasons, maybe we consider in the future. And you keep having those conversations over and over again, again, they feel heard. And you are more importantly trying to help them feel better in the short term, as well as long term. And that's really how you deal with patients of various different types of temperament. So next question is how to possibly be ambidextrous, especially if you're trying to go into a surgical field. And this question, Victor is more focused on doing things like neurosurgery versus neurology versus general surgery. I don't feel like you necessarily have to develop those skills perfectly well in medical school, per se. But obviously, the things that you hear about a lot of times, so brushing your teeth with your left hand, trying to use your hand, if you're right handed using your left handed to do things like eating, and then especially with the actual skills. So if you're tying a suture, try it with left handed, you know, I still can't tie a one handed tie in my left hand, just because I just don't have enough opportunities to do so in order to I really care to be that ambidextric. But in other skills where I do care to be more kind of double handed, things like basketball, I tend to use my left hand more just to get better at that. And so the same experience goes for you. If you truly do want to go into surgery or some kind of procedural field, those kind of initial approaches on how you tie a suture, which way you hold, as you're using different types of tools. So if you're using a caliper, if you're using, you know, the suture kit, try to use it in different hands, try to do your one handed ties, using both hands, try using any basic skill that you're going to use in that field. And that's how you become ambidextric over time. But again, it's not super necessary that you do this in medical school, because half the time you just don't know what skills you'll need. But building those small abilities in your normal day to day life, especially if you're right handed, trying to use your left hand more may help you as a surgeon just make that skill a little bit more easier. So next question is what stereotypes I come across in the hospital and medical school and residency, which one these are true, which ones are not true. So definitely the one that is overblown in medical school is a stereotype of a gunner. This is the person who like goes out of their way to damage everybody in their ways to make sure that they get the highest level of success. Now do these students and people exist? Absolutely. Is it more common than we kind of say probably not? There are definitely students who work really hard and don't give themselves a break. That's not necessarily a gunner. That's just somebody who like doesn't have the best perspective of good work life balance. Or maybe they just have really big ambitious goals. But I haven't met that many people who have gone out of their way to harm people in their way while they're trying to reach their goals. So gunner, that type of stereotype is a little overblown. But then I think you have a good spectrum of people who are just really serious about medicine and just hate to look wrong. And there's a little bit of egotistic type D personality or type A personality like the type D person forget what cluster it is. But it's like a personality test that you can take when you're in medical school to really understand like what kind of emotional kind of in leadership styles you have. But there are definitely people who tend to have more of an egotistical weight on how they make decisions and how they answer questions. And so you will meet those people who are just really serious about what they do. And then they tend to go into certain fields a little bit more than others. So, for example, I may see an internal medicine doctor who is very relaxed and I may see a neurosurgeon resident who is just very kind of focused and like hardgoing. And I think that's just what personalities get attracted by certain fields. But on the flip side, I've also met internal medicine residents who are like, dude, you need to chill. And on the other end I have neurosurgery resident friends who are just like very nice people to hang out with both in the hospital and outside. So it's not always just the truth. But again, gunner overblown. I feel like you have people who are very hard working and they can become very egotistical. That's pretty common. How do you deal with them? You just kind of accept that that's how they take care of their patients, how they take care of their medicine and what they prioritize. And there's some people on the other side that are just like a little too chill. And you just have to have good communication just like we talked about with the patients who have various temperaments. You have various different temperaments between physicians and just being somebody who says, oh, I hear your struggle, your frustration, et cetera. And here's how I'm going to work with that. That is the best way to work with all these different stereotypes. But Victor, overall great questions. Hopefully this helped you out. If there's anything else I can do for you, just let me know in the comments down below or in the email. And then hopefully the rest of our students also find this beneficial. Guys, that is it for today's TMJ show. Hopefully you guys enjoyed some of the answers that we had to give for Victor. If you guys have any more questions, you know where to drop me there in the comments section if you're watching this on YouTube, adding your own Q&A kind of survey down below and I'll be able to answer them as soon as I could get to and then send you a personalized response. And if you're struggling on your medical journey, if you just want that personalized help, then definitely consider checking out our medic night program. It's our coaching program to help medical students and people on their medical journey do better, but doing it with less stress. Most of the things that we help with a lot of our students is how to become more productive as well as study better and get better grades. If you're interested in all the type of results that our students have gotten in the past, the link will be down below. And if you want to check out some of our other programs that are a little bit more DIY and going at your own pace, those will also be linked down below. But with that being said, guys, that is it for today's TMJ show. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. If you're watching this on YouTube, go ahead and hit that like button just to help this video and channel grow, as well as hitting that subscribe notification bell to be where one new videos and episodes go out. Thank you guys as always for making it to the very end of the episode. If you did enjoy this episode and didn't check out these videos or episodes that you can check out either on YouTube and I'll link them down below in the podcast in case you're listening. But as always, my friends, thank you for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys and yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.