5 Must-Watch Medical TV Shows

Surprisingly, when you ask a medical student what their favourite medical TV show is, many will say they don't even watch any! A lot of my friends don't have that one medical show that they're attached to, but I happen to enjoy this genre thoroughly! When asked why, a lot of medial students say they're just not realistic or interesting. I totally agree about the unrealistic-ness of it all, but I do find them entertaining to watch, so I'll keep doing so!

Some aspects of medical shows I enjoy are how they tackle issues like insurance, end of life decisions, and the bureaucracy.

I have here a few of my favourite medial TV shows that I want to share with you all, and if you've watched any I haven't listed, do leave them down below!

GREY'S ANATOMY

This is definitely the OG of all medical shows, and the most loved and popular! It's been running since 2005 and we're 16 seasons in and still waiting for more! I love this show because it's thoroughly entertaining - there is intense drama straight from season 1 - and the hundreds of characters all get to have moments where their back stories are explored. I found that there were moments where the drama outweighed the actual medicine and especially from season 14 onward, it seemed heavily focused on the romance aspect.

There were some very cool cases and surgeries I found interesting, like the woman who grew numerous mini spleens following a surgery, the face transplant on the woman with amnesia, the man and woman connected by a pole going through the both of them following an accident, and the woman with toxic blood that made most people lose consciousness.

CHICAGO MED

I honestly feel like this show is 70% drama and 30% showing actual surgeries. I don't recall any specific surgeries or cases that pop out to me, but I can tell you all about my favourite couple and all the crazy things that happen to the characters. I'd recommend this show if you're into the drama of it all but not necessarily if you're looking for medical inspiration.

DR ROMANTIC

Once you get past the cringe of the name, it's a great K-drama! The thing about Korean dramas is that they are all focused and principally centered on romance, and the main genre it claims to be is sprinkled around in scenes here and there. Medical dramas are (mostly) set in a hospital and surprisingly has quite a lot of medical content, but it's definitely a romantic drama at the end of the day.

Dr Romantic season 1 is centered around two doctors who work in a big hospital in the city, and after an almost fatal accident and a touch of medical bureaucracy, both end up working in a small countryside hospital. It highlights medical bureaucracy so well, and puts into perspective that medicine and the medical field is still a business that some benefit from, while others suffer at their hand. It follows their journeys as they grow as doctors, while also highlighting other medical professionals like nurses and doctors who aren't surgeons (which I don't think is really done in Western shows!). I have yet to finish season 2, but it follows a similar plot!

THE GOOD DOCTOR

This was a hugely popular show when it came out, and I hopped onto the trend and finished the first season in 2 days. When season 2 came out, I just didn't have that same fire anymore, but did manage to get through it eventually. It puts a different twist on all medical shows in that the main character is autistic and training to be a surgeon. There are a lot of cool cases in this one; the very first episode has a tracheotomy (which I still find fascinating whenever I see this in a show), a tumor growing in a fetus that has to be surgically removed, and a man with a 200 pound tumour growing around his body.

I think it balances drama with medicine pretty well, but honestly the characters are a bit forgetful!

DOCTOR STRANGER

This is another Korean drama that actually has quite a lot of medicine in it! It follows a boy and his doctor dad who were tricked into going to North Korea and they ended up being denied to go back to South Korea. He trains as a doctor in North Korea, falls in love, and tries to escape with his girlfriend but they end up separated. When he reaches the South, he starts work as a doctor and tries to find out what happened to his girlfriend. There are a lot of cool surgeries and cases in this one, which I enjoyed.

The drama-to-medicine ratio is surprisingly very good so I'd definitely recommend this to any K-drama fan or medical TV show fan!

What are your favourite medical dramas?

Tell me below!

What Deleting Social Media Taught Me

The trend of deleting social medial is all the rage online. People claiming all sorts of benefits and advantages to either deleting all their distracting apps or just not using their phone at all, and encouraging others to do the same thing too. When deciding to delete social media, I didn't fall into the hype because of what I read online, but rather because my final exams were coming up and I wanted to focus. Just as simple as that!

So sometime in mid-June, I deleted the 3 most distracting apps from my phone; Instagram, Twitter, and 小红书 (a Chinese app similar to Pinterest/Instagram) and gave myself 3 weeks to go without, and this is what I learnt!

THERE IS SO MUCH TIME IN THE DAY

Usually, I get to the end of my day and wonder where all my time went. How is it already 8pm? When did it get so dark outside? When you think about it, you may only spend your time scrolling through your apps in 10 minute increments, but those 10 minutes add up fast during the day. They eat up your time and before you know it, you've reached the end of the day with nothing to show for it. I found that whenever I was bored, I'd switch through those 3 apps just for something to do and those 10 minutes would become hours very soon, and it would be a scramble to get something done that should have been done ages ago.

I found that by deleting social media, I was less rushed and could take my time in doing what I wanted to. The first couple of days were honestly painfully long, but on day 3, I woke up and got into the swing of my new routine.

I AM EASILY DISTRACTED

When I study, I set a timer on my phone and put it somewhere I can't reach. To do this, I use the app Forest because if you exit out of the app, the tree you select to grow will die. Sadly, an update to the app now means you can exit out of the app, use your phone as normal with the timer still running in the back and your tree won't die! So, I found that when a lecture was on the boring or difficult side, I was able to "give myself a small break" and scroll through Twitter or update my Instagram story, which meant I was ultimately getting nothing done.

Not having these apps anymore meant that even if something was hard or not that interesting, I literally had to force myself into continuing. Again, the first few days were hard but after giving it some time, I was able to adjust. If I found my mind drifting off, I'd have a stretch and motivate myself to keep going with a snack (or several!)

NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE SHARED ONLINE

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I love to update my stories with basically everything I'm doing, cooking, eating, where I'm going etc. Part of it is because I live in China and want to share my experiences online, but another part is because I just love taking photos and find satisfaction in people commenting on the photos and whatnot.

This gets exhausting - every blogger and their mum has spoken about how stressful and tiring it can be to keep up with both your everyday life and your online life on top of that, and I get those feelings very often. Getting rid of Instagram was a relief because I didn't need to share what I ate or did that day. I didn't think "How many people have viewed my story today?" or "What time is it, I need to post something", or anything along those lines. I could just do anything and leave it at that!

Having re-downloaded my Instagram has made me realise that I genuinely enjoy capturing everything, but it still shouldn't be at my expense.

BEING OUT OF THE LOOP IS OKAY

One of the things about social media that draws me in and keeps me hooked is how I like feeling like I'm on top of the news and trends and whatnot. Twitter can find out the breaking story or latest meme before anything else, and finding out about something as soon as it drops is a weird enjoyment of mine. But when I got rid of Twitter and got out of that bubble, I was left with the realisation that it really doesn't matter!

In fact, going back on Twitter has put it in even greater perspective, as I see that getting most of my information from social media (and ultimately from other people, strangers, and their opinions) is really a disservice to myself. Sometimes it's fine to just not know anything, and after the events of May/June, it's important to log off for a while.

READ: Turning Your FOMO into JOMO

As well as all of this, I found myself way more productive and happier overall! Removing the pressure of just your presence simply being online was amazing, and I would definitely delete my social media again or even make a habit out of doing it regularly! Being left alone with just my thoughts and no one else's opinions let me know myself more and I enjoyed that too.

Have you ever deleted social media? What did you learn?

Finishing The First Year of Med School! | Med Diaries 002

Well, what a fail Med Diaries turned out to be, eh? I had initially planned to have these written and uploaded once a month but here we are 3 months after the first post went up, and this is only the second one I'm writing! It was a busy time during May, June, and the beginning of July - finishing the semester and studying for finals, then being told we have to have an extra month of lessons after finals. As I'm writing this now, we have one more week left before summer ~truly~ starts, but all that to say; I'm now officially done with my first year of medical school!

I never thought those words would come true, because some time after June, time started dragging and every day just molded into one another, the routine became monotonous and the studying seemed never-ending. But I'm done now and it feels like a dream!

During the final semester, I was taking regional anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, Chinese language (Mandarin), and sports, and all of them were online, yes even sports! Our next semester is looking to be partly online and partly regularly, but we'll see how it goes what with the whole Covid situation.

So for the next semester, we've got Pathology, Microbiology, Immunology, Pathophysiology, and Chinese History and Culture. I think it's gonna be another tough semester just like the others before it, but hopefully I'll be able to just push through and get to the other side!

Highs of the previous semester were realising that I could definitely motivate myself to do the whole online school thing, and also having free time to both cook and study during exam season (which is practically unheard of for a medical student!). Some lows, however, were the monotony of the semester and also not being able to have lab! The labs for all subjects have pushed to the next semester, which means it's gonna be even busier than what it would have been.

So, this was just a quick little update to say where I've been and what I've been up to!

Please look forward to the next one! :)