The Mindful Medical Student

Spiegel’s work presents a valuable tool in negotiating the hidden curriculum of medical school—cynicism, loneliness, and dishonesty. Its strength lies in its practical application of psychiatric techniques and in its accessible examples based on the experiences of other medical students and physicians. . . . ‘By committing a few moments daily’ to some of these techniques, medical students and future physicians will profit well into their careers.

What sets The Mindful Medical Student apart from similarly themed books is its emphasis on achieving clarity, reflective capacity and wholeness through the creation of a uniquely personal narrative. Spiegel’s techniques facilitate the processing of experiences so students take an active role in moulding their own transformation and protecting themselves against emotional shutdown and cynicism. . . . The Mindful Medical Student is an enjoyable read with an entertaining conversational style. Despite its title, the book shares valuable insights that may be useful for all health care providers in training. It is essentially a manual on how to maintain sanity in an often grueling medical environment and culture, makes a compelling argument that self-care is not a luxury. It gives students permission to step back from their textbooks, to distinguish the forest from the trees and to appreciate their special place in that forest.

The Mindful Medical Student should be required reading for everyone in medical school. More than that, it should be a required course!

This book can be a valuable resource for any medical student in navigating the sometimes tortuous waters of training in ways that will promote greater sanity, healing, and compassion, both for oneself, and for one’s patients, not just while in school, but across the lifespan of one’s practice.

Medical school can be an inspiring, lofty experience or an extended exercise in personal degradation. The Mindful Medical Student is a clear, concise guidebook for negotiating the challenges all medical students face. If you want to not just survive medical school, but triumph, this book is highly recommended.

Jeremy Spiegel, one of our former students at Dartmouth Medical School, was always full of wisdom, depth, and perspective, and everyone who interacted with him always seemed to learn something. His new text does more of the same as it shines a useful and practical light on a great truth—it’s important to stay true to yourself and the values that brought you to medicine during the difficult socialization process that is medical school. Dr. Ron Epstein from the University of Rochester School of Medicine has written that “mindfulness” is a very useful and very high level state to achieve in medicine, a state that is even above practicing “evidence based medicine” which has become so much our mantra for medicine today. Jeremy gives practical strategies to become and stay mindful, to hang on to and honor your “true self” despite forces that hinder this and to both preserve your own humanity and share it with others as you mature into physicianhood. Having been a student affairs dean for years, I’ve never seen anything written like this book which possesses Jeremy’s unique perspectives and is informed by his deep understanding of the psyche. It is well worth reading and taking its lessons to heart for anyone on the journey to becoming a doctor.