In medicine, we would like to believe that treatment decisions are black and white, evidence is clear cut and uncertainty is a bygone impediment, squashed decades ago by the tight jaws of the scientific method. Yet it seems the more we learn, the more we have to argue about. Uncertainty is here to stay. As(...)
About Benjamin Ostrander
Posts by Benjamin Ostrander:
The Making of a Terrorist
As we approach the final months of 2016, few would dispute that it has been one of the most politically tumultuous years in recent memory, punctuated by a hugely polarizing election, colossal political shifts, rising domestic gun violence — especially in the form of mass shootings — and horrifying terrorist attacks. Amid this discord and(...)
A Renewed Appreciation for Olympic Athletes
In medical school, physicians-in-training spend countless hours learning about the human body. First, we are taught to understand the complexities of normal physiology and how such intricate systems can become unbalanced and deteriorate, leading to an endless and fascinating multitude of human diseases and illnesses. With this foundational knowledge, we set off to begin the(...)
Local and National Precision Medicine Initiatives Aim to Individualize Medical Care
“You can match a blood transfusion to a blood type — that was an important discovery. What if matching a cancer cure to our genetic code was just as easy, just as standard? What if figuring out the right dose of medicine was as simple as taking our temperature?” President Obama posed these questions in(...)
How the Brain Makes Sense with Mental Maps
The Johns Hopkins Hospital can be a labyrinth to anyone unaccustomed to its many hallways, towers and tunnels. To navigate through such a complex space, special neural networks are activated to help us find our way. Specifically, a cortical map of neurons, made up of so-called grid cells, fire in specific regions of the brain(...)
Colombian Medical Graduates Learn Through Service
As medical students across America graduated this past May, receiving the prized M.D. they worked so hard to obtain, many have their minds squarely focused on one thing — intern year. Some students have only a few weeks off until what is often considered the most exhausting, overwhelming and infamous year in all of medical(...)
Novel Study Tools Redefine How We Learn
Medical knowledge grows like a metastatic cancer, rapidly expanding every day, uninhibited as new literature is published, novel discoveries are made and evidence is refined. As this magnificent body of knowledge grows, so too does the magnitude of foundational material that medical students are required to master. Nowhere is this more evident than with First(...)
The Life Lottery
One in 292.2 million — those were the odds of winning the recent $1.5 billion Powerball, the largest lottery jackpot ever. As it happens, a few months ago, the medical student class of 2018 was learning about obstetrics, gynecology and reproduction as part of the Genes to Society curriculum, which gave me a newfound appreciation(...)
Destiny in an Envelope: An Inside Look at Match Day at Johns Hopkins
Match Day on Social MediaThe buzzing crowd in the Anne and Mike Armstrong Medical Education Building atrium counted down in anxious unison as the seconds made their way closer toward noon, rapidly approaching one of the most thrilling moments in medical school. Moments that shape a life trajectory are few and far between. Yet every(...)
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