D E PA R TM E NT S I NTR O S P E C TI O N S
Imposter medicine Michael Dea Critical reflective writing holds a prominent place in the Medical Humanities curriculum at Rocky Vista University, College of Osteopathic Medicine. Beginning in the first semester of Medical Ethics, students engage in critical reflection to explore their own assumptions and biases and how their values impact their practice. This submission is selected and edited by Nicole Michels, PhD, chair of the Department of Medical Humanities, and Alexis Horst, MA, writing center instructor.
Michael Dea is a second-year medical student aspiring to become a surgeon. Michael was born in San Francisco, Calif., but spent the majority of his life living in various countries in Africa including Botswana, South Africa and Uganda. He moved back to Southern California where he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Although he does not consider any one place his home, he loves living in the beautiful state of Colorado! This piece is dedicated to his parents, Monica and Randall Dea, for their continued love and support.
Scalpels are sharp. They’re precise. They’re nimble. They help save lives. They’re reliable servants to our health and prosperity. They were forged into this world with a clear mission. They simply use their sharp edges, their symmetry and their levity to do their best and engage with the moment as it comes. They accept their calling with grace, humility and precision. They don’t doubt themselves or wake up with the fear of failing like I do. They are not afraid of blood, old age or cancer. They are tools from the world that break into the vast and complex worlds of our patients’ bodies, an extra finger on an already trained hand to carve out the threat of disease. Death can’t hide from them. I respect scalpels, the work one must put in to even hold it, the years of study and practice, and their representation of how far we’ve come in medicine. At the same time, I am constantly reminded that they are only a miniscule part of the equation. In the spirit of that old adage, a tool is only as good as the surgeon wielding it. I recall a time when a trained surgeon used this tool to make that difference in someone else’s life. During a surgical service at the International Hospital of Kampala, I met John, a young man from
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South Sudan who was medevacked to us with an infected gunshot wound to the abdomen. That’s when the utter reality of this profession struck me like a lightning bolt. The questions I asked myself revealed my insecurities, as they became more grounded in self-doubt and fear, instead of just mere medical curiosity. Questions like: when the time comes, would I be reliable, like a scalpel is, to make confident and quick decisions? Could I ever carry the responsibility of helping save someone like John, and put aside my self-doubt and vulnerability? Witnessing the attending physician interact with John humbled me. It reminded me that every decision I would make as a doctor could heavily impact someone else’s life. It lit a fire within my chest to become the best physician that I can be, which first means being more confident in myself and removing my doubt. This inspiration and magic of medicine was immediately conflicted when I started medical school, where I was greeted by a mountain of challenging emotions. This included my old friend self-doubt, and a new friend, imposter syndrome. My first days of school as a first year were plagued with thoughts and feelings of not being good enough. Would I be able to
get through these next four years without failing? Would I be able to perform high enough on board exams to be competitive for residency applications? I allowed these haunting questions to infiltrate my mind, like a parasite making its way into the human body to wreak havoc. Whereas I initially envisioned a hands-on and humanitarian approach to my learning, I was greeted with the prospect of having to spend most of my time at home in front of a Zoom chat room on my computer due to the pandemic. It seemed to me like the big picture was gone, or at least missing, while we memorized details like the Krebs Cycle. In my mind, patient care was put in the backseat, the reasons why I decided to go to medical school became clouded, as grades suddenly became the most important aspect. The old saying, “fake it till you make it” never felt more true. Here’s what I’ve come to realize: We will never learn everything in medicine, and who wants to be perfect anyway? And it’s okay to feel like an imposter. It offers me humility; I acknowledge my shortcomings and that fear of not being good enough sharpens me, like a scalpel, to tailor my learning to my weak points, while building
