Summary: Episode 28: I’ve heard of perfectionism, but is the Imposter Phenomenon like being abducted by aliens? No, most medical students do it early in the first year of medical school and Pre-Meds usually live that way!<br> Listen to the podcast here…<br> If a physician is honest with herself, she will have to admit that sometimes medicine isn’t enough to care for patients.<br> There exists a chasm between the volume of information that one can apply in medical practice and where we live.<br> Medical students realize this in a matter of weeks once medical school starts – there is simply to much to learn!<br> In this podcast, I discuss perfectionism – a disposition to feel that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. The result of a perfectionistic internal dialogue in medical school is a conflict with reality.<br> There are only a few categories of responses to the <a href="http://medical-mastermind-community.com/med-students/phase-1-adaptation">overwhelm in medical school</a>.<br> <br> * Honesty with yourself<br> * Honesty with others<br> * A bring-it-on attitude (necessary for the <a href="http://medical-mastermind-community.com/med-students/the-nrmp-match-and-scramble-course">most competitive residencies</a>)<br> * Denial<br> <br> A majority of medical students, I believe, are honest with themselves about this, but don’t like to talk about it with others.<br> Often, there is a delay in talking about struggling academically in medical school. It was astonishing to see the personality of my 225-person medical school class switch from being like regular, <a href="http://medical-mastermind-community.com/member-content/evolution-of-a-physician-in-training">idealistic Pre-Meds</a>, to being quiet about their grades overnight.<br> After the first set of tests came out, no one talked about them. I had a friend that aced all the tests and people got mad when he told them about it.<br> The opposite was more often true: students don’t want to discuss their mediocre grades.<br> The result is the Imposter Phenomenon: occurs when high achieving individuals chronically question their abilities and fear that others will discover them to be intellectual frauds <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10211285" target="_blank">(1)</a>.<br> So, what is a mature, healthy response to this type of stress? How will you get through it in a way that will leave you happy and whole all the way through the medical education journey?<br> This is a very personal struggle for everyone, and there a lots of things people do to cope. It’s easy to cite <a></a><a href="http://medical-mastermind-community.com/member-content/evolution-of-a-physician-in-training">research articles that discuss every step of the medical education</a> journey, but how does Doctor Dan really feel internally?<br> I have decided to be increasingly vulnerable in this podcast, so I’ll actually answer this question publicly. I’m about to lay out more than I discussed in the <a href="http://medical-mastermind-community.com/member-content/counting-the-costs">private burnout MP3</a> that I made available for members only years ago.<br> Here’s how I reckon all of these points in my own, spiritual life:<br> <br> * I am not perfect. In fact, I’m prone to do the wrong thing when left alone.<br> * Of myself I don’t have the intellectual power to remember every single detail that will be important one day to a patient.<br> * I will make mistakes.<br> * I have to find a way to be happy with whom I am even though I can’t live up to the unspoken curriculum that states I need to remember everything.<br> <br> This mindset fluctuated so often in medical school that I felt like I had Multiple Personality Disorder.<br> It wasn’t until residency that I came to terms with where to find that sort of strength – in spirituality, a Power Greater Than Myself.
