Practical Lessons for the Parent in Medical School - SDN (2024)

Being a parent in medical school is no joke. It takes character, grit, and an innate sense of holding yourself together. You will feel like having a toddler-sized meltdown when you’ve had five hours of sleep, are severely over your daily self-prescribed maximum dose of 300mg of caffeine, and all you’ve had to munch on has been jelly sandwich crusts while making an emergency lunch for the picky one. When chaos becomes the new normal and self-evaluations are micromanaged by toddlers, here are some parental hacks for those willing to kayak upstream from the normal medical student’s extracurricular life.

It Takes a Village

That village is not your medical school, but your partner, friends and family, daycare, nannies, and babysitters. Set yourself up for success with a third and possibly fourth backup plan for childcare at all times, if possible. This may include having on-hand car seats to pop into someone’s car on the spur of the moment, backup babysitters for exam days when your first one decides at the last minute to cancel, and planning several months in advance around your mandatory events at school, as much as possible.

Some medical school parents, mostly Dads, whom I’ve had the privilege to know have stay-at-home spouses. As a mom, mine worked full time. While we had great healthcare due to him working for a large trauma center in allied health, we did not have enough take-home pay and ended up taking out loans to cover childcare.

You need to know that because you are in graduate school, you do not qualify for the federal funds for low-income earners that everyone else enjoys, including those completing bachelor’s degrees. President Biden touted that he made subsidized funding available for childcare for the nation, but this was already in place and graduate students are disqualified. If desired, you can research this on your own or fight it in your state court; it is a federal problem and not a state problem. Financial aid should allow you to apply for a childcare loan, which may not cover your expenses depending on your childcare costs. Our daycare was about $800.00/week for three kids. It may get financially difficult, and planning for this is your best strategy, unless you are independently wealthy or have family members to lean on. My journey with childcare and medical school is a whole other article, but going through this has made me an advocate for childcare rights.

Get Yourself a Parent Mentor

Regardless of whether you would have hung out with them pre-child, these people are going to let you know in real-time that it is okay to be different. And by different, I mean being a parent in medical school. They might have some great advice, too. The best thing about finding a mentor is that you will know that this pursuit is achievable, and you will realize it is a difficult task to be competitive for residency and simultaneously be a parent, especially for moms in medical school. Additionally, there is no limit to the number of mentors you may have. They might all have something different to add or a nugget of wisdom to share. Either way, find a mentor and meet with them at least once, preferably in person.

Show Yourself Compassion

This is one lesson I learned later in medical school, but I wish I had known earlier. While running around for residents, attendings, and their patients all day, then caring for your little darlings all night (or vice versa if you are on nights), it is easy to forget that you must eat well, breathe, have a full night of sleep occasionally, and stretch and exercise. You give your kids a balanced meal – ensure you have a balanced meal. Your kids show you their little toilet paper roll robots from daycare – let yourself be creative sometimes. You run up and down three flights of stairs to the emergency room with the pediatric hospitalist – care for yourself and go for a run or workout.

A second aspect of self-compassion is self-reflection. Depending on your personal experience of childbirth, doctors’ visits, emergency room visits, specialists, and more, you may have experienced some medical trauma or vicarious medical trauma of your own. These lived experiences may affect your learning and experiences this early in your career, as well as subconsciously affect your parenting. Setting healthy boundaries is easier earlier in your medical school career since there is most likely more leeway now than there will be later for such personal issues. I wish someone had pointed this out to me earlier. I only realized it myself halfway through my fourth year.

Do Not Compare Yourself to Anyone Else

Depending on how competitive you are naturally, you may feel pressure to do all the research, go on the ski vacation after that conference, do a rotation in Guatemala, or volunteer every week at the food pantry. Don’t get sucked into what people without kids are doing. You will be applying to residency as an adult, and there are a lot of adults who are parents in control of who gets into their residency. You will most likely connect with someone in your specialty of choice, so stick with your parenting and choose one or two extracurriculars that will boost your residency resume specific to your specialty. Meaning, if you need research, do that and parent. You have your personal statement to talk about how being responsible for little lives while simultaneously under pressure makes you a better applicant if you choose to include this. If the residency you are applying to looks down on you for being a parent, do you really want to go to that residency anyway?

Use Your Free Time First for Medical School

This may be controversial, but there is no free time if you are a parent and in medical school. When you get free time, it usually is something like if your child fell asleep early, a relative came to visit and takes the kids out, or you have extra cash for a babysitter. This also applies more if you have a lower support system at home and a lot of the childcare falls on you. When you get a free unexpected moment, I suggest you first push yourself to do medical school studying. You never know when one child might wake up and need to be tucked in again five times throughout the night, or someone is unhappy with their food and makes a huge mess on ketchup and nuggets night, or your child has an outbreak of hand-foot-mouth, leaving you without childcare for several days and in fear that your other children (or you) will get the virus. Taking this unexpected free time and using it first towards your academics will serve you well come test day.

Reward Yourself!

Operant conditioning is a thing, and humans work well with positive reinforcement. It may be hard at first to have a screaming child with colic and a toddler running around mid-Anki deck, a relative constantly telling you to quit school for the kids, or a disgruntled spouse who thought medical school was like a regular work week and now must unexpectedly tackle the brunt of childcare. You wanted this, and you will make an excellent physician for demonstrating more character and grit than the average medical student.

So, after you make it to the hospital at 5:45 am for 6:00 am sign-out, eat balanced well-proportioned meals all day, take extra time to tuck in your little snuggly bug, play blocks with your toddler, clean up dinner and pack lunches, fold laundry, order new size 2T socks online, remember to fill up your car with gas before the morning commute, download the next Curbside episode for said drive, and tame your attitude from a lack of autonomy and paycheck, make sure to reward yourself. Take a warm bath or a walk, sit outside with a nice cup of tea, go to the gym or for a swim, or read a poem or a short story, but reward yourself.

I once had a friend who raised four boys on her own, and it was amazing to me. She told me when she gets a chance at the end of the week when the kids are asleep, she turns off all her devices, makes a bath with lavender and rose, and eats one Lindt truffle. By focusing all her stress into that experience, she lets it go. Another medical student with older children booked a yoga retreat for herself over break. Whether it is something as simple as a truffle or as wonderful as a retreat, reward yourself.

Bonus Advice: Structured Goal Setting is a Thing of the Past

Your dopamine hit from reaching your goals and checking off your list daily, perhaps the way you functioned pre-child, is a thing of the past. The sooner you accept that you won’t get that hit, the better off you will be. This may be a jagged little pill to process, but kids present chaos in every stage of development: crying because they can’t talk, walking and getting into things, running and falling and crying, then talking all the time because they no longer cry. Then there was that day when your kid pooped outside on the front lawn because they were playing the “poop and pee” game with the other kids on the block when you had a goal of 25 UWorld questions and 200 Anki flashcards that day. Forget those goals! Don’t frustrate yourself because you can’t reach them within your own made-up deadline.

Instead, make general goals. Do you need to get through UWorld a month before your exam? Great! It’s time to get creative. Download relevant podcasts. On your phone, voice record missed Q-bank explanations to listen to them while doing chores or commuting. Do these as much as possible and when the free time magically presents itself – because it will, you just can’t plan on it daily. These are just some examples of how to keep and reach your study goals while having kids. So, don’t be afraid to ditch the SMART goals and recover from the checklist dopamine hits. You are now a badass, and you may make your own rules about goals!

As a mentor to parents in medical school, I have given this and similar advice. These nuggets of wisdom may be applied to anyone taking care of another human being regardless of age, working a job outside of medical school, or any other major activity that teeters on the fine line between chaos and reality to push the limit past norms and social expectations in medical school.

Find a mentor, practice self-compassion, don’t compare yourself, use your free time properly for medical school first, reward yourself, and set large and flexible goals. As a parent in medical school, remember that medical school is temporary, but being a parent is not. People in residency, in general, understand that.

Finally, one of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard was, “Have kids in medical school,” because residency is time-limited and being an attending is time-sensitive. While medicine may expect a lot from its participants, we are still human beings and have a right to live to our fullest potential, being both physicians and parents.