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Joshua D. Niforatos, MTS Joshua D. Niforatos, MTS (1 Posts)

Medical Student Guest Writer

Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine


Joshua D. Niforatos, MTS is in his last year of medical school in Cleveland, Ohio. He aspires to be an emergency medicine physician actively involved in clinical research and all things social emergency medicine and advocacy. Joshua also watches a lot of HGTV.




Dear NBME and FSMB, I watch HGTV more than Netflix: A Response to the Invited Commentary on USMLE Step 1

The recent ruminations of Drs. Katsufrakis and Chaudhry in the form of an invited commentary in Academic Medicine, entitled “Improving Residency Selection Requires Close Study and Better Understanding of Stakeholder Needs,” has garnered a significant amount of attention on Twitter. Drs. Katsufrakis and Chaudhry’s commentary was in response to a well-written and well-reasoned article by a group of medical students published in the same journal recommending the USMLE Step 1 transition from a numeric score to pass/fail.

Competition Versus Collaboration in Residency

Now that you, the reader, have become house staff, the time has come to change your mindset from one of competition to one of collaboration with your peers. The path that leads to achieving the MD or DO degree is one of often single-minded pursuit of academic victory. The competition has been fierce.

How Physicians Can Fight Mass Incarceration: Focusing On The Youth

A quiet, frail, emaciated gentleman in his 60s who was dying of cancer. What made him different was that he was shackled to the bed, one arm and one leg bound to the bed of a barren room, lit only by the pale blue light from the window that cast the silhouette of bars on the floor. This was the prison unit.

Nita Chen, MD Nita Chen, MD (4 Posts)

Peer Reviewer

University of California at Irvine


Nita Chen is an incoming neurology intern starting at University of California, Irvine. She spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Recently, she graduated as part of the class of 2017 at Albany Medical College.

Pocket Doodles: My First Year as a Physician

Neurology resident physician Nita Chen, MD journals through her first year of residency in her graphic medicine column, Pocket Doodles: My First Year as a Physician.