Having a Chronic illness and applying to Medical School

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hey there,

US applicant here and I have had a chronic illness that spiked the summer before my undergrad. I have spent undergrad in and out of treatments and as a result, have had many prescription meds with severe side effects. Currently, I am doing much better than my earlier years of undergrad and my GPA has an overall upward trend. However, as you can imagine, my grades have not been the best as I have been preoccupied with other things. My major is international affairs and minor in english as I have many other interests and love diverging in the intersectionality of medicine and the other aspects of study relevant in this world (politics in medicine!).
Two questions:

  1. Do med schools have access to my medical records? If they do, will I then not have to explain much of why my grades are the way that they are?
  2. If they do not, should I write about my illness in my essays? It is a large part of why I want to be a doctor as the death of my friend in treatment due to misdiagnosis has encouraged me to pursue a career that will help me be the doctor that we needed when I was in treatment (not to diss on all doctors! Just my personal experience and I currently have the best doctor that is helping me). I was deterred from my medical pathway (I “gave up” on the sciences when I was in treatment, as telling from my major/minor) originally but I came back to it when I saw that this there is a reason I went through what I went through.

—> side note: working with my physical therapist and recovering from my treatment, my chronic illness should not impede on my ability to be a physician in the future (fingers crossed!).

Thank you for your help. It has been a long and difficult journey to get here so any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

First of all, I’m so sorry to hear about your illness! I have various mental and physical health issues so I know that they sometimes get in the way of school. :frowning:

Second, my undergrad degree is in English so I can tell you that it is more helpful to medicine than you may think! Not only will you be able to use those strong writing skills when writing notes, but you will also (hopefully) be able to score high on the CARS section and stand out from the 1000s of applicants with traditional science backgrounds. If you are able to work/volunteer clinically, I highly recommend scribing. In addition to being able to bring my strong writing ability to the medical field, I have learned a lot of new terminology and seen cool procedures I otherwise would not have seen as a pre-med.

I highly doubt med schools have access to your records, even if you are getting medical care at an academic hospital. If this is the case, maybe check with the medical records department to confirm that the medical school admissions office cannot access them without your permission. Regarding your second question, that’s a tough one! Since I didn’t have medical issues until after I graduated college, I might want to mention them (even with minimal detail) to explain why I changed my career paths from teaching or counseling to medicine. Also, your vulnerability will demonstrate to adcoms the abilities to be empathetic and compassionate with pts. My concern is that disclosing my own medical information will send the wrong message to adcoms that I can’t handle medical school. For that reason, I might wait until an interview or after acceptance to disclose more detail.