Advice for Medical Students

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Introduction and General Advice

This is my personal opinion as a medical professor for almost 30 years. I was a medical student in an era where I had the chance to see the founding professors of the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University. I was a medical student who performed numerous medical procedures, including 10 normal deliveries, 10 forceps deliveries, 10 vacuum deliveries, cesarean sections, appendectomies, and perforated stomach surgeries. Importantly, I still remember how our professors taught us and how my friends and I behaved as medical students.

Medical students are in a transitional period between being someone with no medical knowledge and someone with enough medical knowledge to treat others' illnesses. Therefore, medical students need to accumulate knowledge and develop various skills to reach that point. Although there are many things to accumulate and develop, they can be summarized as:

  1. Differentiating between normal and abnormal - A doctor must be able to tell whether a patient's symptoms or physical condition is normal or abnormal, and if abnormal, how it is abnormal.
  2. Performing medical procedures as a doctor does - A doctor must be able to perform procedures, dress for the operating room, participate in surgeries, and perform or assist in surgeries to some extent.

Therefore, it is not difficult for everyone to understand that the duty of a medical student when rotating in the surgery department is to accumulate knowledge that leads to the ability to differentiate and identify whether a patient has a surgical disease, what kind it is, and how. And to practice skills in performing various surgical procedures, including practicing entering and assisting in surgical cases. This foundation of procedural skills will be used to build upon for more difficult procedures, no matter which specialty they pursue.

If you don't learn, practice, and train in these things as a medical student, when will you? If you can't do it as a medical student, everyone sees it as normal and forgives you. But if you lack the skills and can't perform basic procedures, and then try to learn as a doctor, there will likely be problems.

What I Want to See from Medical Students in Their Surgery Rotation

When medical students rotate through the surgery department, I want to see the following:

Outpatient Department (OPD)

I do not want to see medical students in the examination room sitting idly, ignoring patients, chatting, sleeping, or playing on their phones or tablets.

But I want to see:

  1. Medical students who are enthusiastic about taking patient histories, whether from professors, residents, or the patients themselves.
  2. Medical students who are enthusiastic about performing physical examinations on patients in the outpatient department, which means looking closely and seriously, not sitting in a chair 2 meters behind the patient. Palpation means examining and touching with their own hands and fingers. Percussion, and auscultation.
  3. Medical students asking questions to learn about the diseases of each patient they encounter.

Operating Room (OR)

I do not want to see medical students entering the operating room and standing in a group far away, chatting, or playing on their phones or tablets.

But I want to see:

  1. Medical students who are enthusiastic about scrubbing in for cases. Whether it's 1, 2, 3, or 4 students, it doesn't matter; all should come in. Medical students must learn to scrub their hands, put on a surgical gown, maintain sterility throughout the case, stand in the correct position during surgery, and assist in surgery. If you don't scrub in, you won't learn these things. If you don't come in, you will never have the opportunity to perform various procedures, from easy to difficult. These things can only happen by scrubbing in.
  2. When scrubbing in, medical students should be curious about what is being done, ask questions, and engage in conversation. Not just stand still 2 feet away without looking at the actual surgical site.
  3. If they choose to observe surgeries in multiple rooms, they will benefit from seeing a greater variety of operations, but they should watch with interest and curiosity.

Inpatient Department (IPD)

I want to see:

  1. Medical students talking to patients and performing physical examinations to recognize physical abnormalities, thereby accumulating knowledge for themselves.
  2. Medical students who are enthusiastic about practicing various procedures commonly performed in the inpatient department, such as wound dressing.
Last updated - December 14, 2025