It’s Halloween, and everyone is playing dress-up. The funny thing is that I feel like I’ve been playing dress-up every day for the past year. I alluded before to how the practice of medicine is, in large part, about putting on a show, and I feel like, as a medical student, this is more true than at any other stage of training. We’re not only trying to convince our patients, our residents, and our attendings of how competent we are, but I think, to an extent, also ourselves. It’s no wonder that impostor syndrome is rampant among the med student population.
When I was doing my clinical rotations as a 3rd year, I was often told that I should strive to have my patients regard me as “their doctor.” It wasn’t rare for my superiors to introduce me as “Student Doctor” (which, though technically correct, is a title that is, in my opinion, designed to mislead patients) or “Doctor,” and I occasionally even dared to use the “Student Doctor” moniker to refer to myself. The truth is that I’m closer to being a “real” doctor than I’d like to think. But until then, I’ll keep putting on my costume and playing my part. Fake it ’til you make it, right?