Making Medicine Make Sense

The “Why” by Tony Phan

One of the most meaningful lessons I’ve learned during my third year of medical school didn’t come from a textbook or classroom lecture—it came from listening. On my clinical rotations, I’ve watched patients and caregivers pause before leaving the exam room; hesitating as they inquire, “Can I ask one more question?” Sometimes there just isn’t enough time. On a busy clinic day, appointments move quickly, physicians balance full schedules, and conversations that deserve more attention are often hindered by the haste of modern healthcare. Patients then leave with their after-visit summaries, medication instructions, and educational pamphlets, yet many seem to walk away unsure of what their diagnosis means or what happens next.

Those moments really stuck with me. As medical students, we’re taught to communicate clearly, but I’ve realized that conveying information and creating understanding don’t always align. I saw this juxtaposition during medicine rounds when a seasoned attending challenged a first-year resident with a simple request: explain the patient’s condition in a way that they could understand, without using scientific jargon. The resident, despite having a strong grasp of medical knowledge, struggled to translate words that would make sense to those outside the medical field.

That moment highlighted something I began to recognize through my rotations—the ability to understand medicine and the ability to explain medicine are two separate skillsets, and both require intentionality. We can’t assume every patient has time to read through pages of educational material once they get home, nor can we expect that foreign medical terminology will suddenly become clear after a single clinic visit. When questions remain unanswered, people tend to seek information somewhere else, through internet searches, family members, podcasts, videos, and increasingly, social media. They’re not necessarily looking for more information; they’re searching for information that makes sense.

Watching this throughout my rotations really made me reexamine the way I thought about patient education. Medicine is built on evidence-based data, which is often complicated, but patients experience it through uncertainty and emotion. A diagnosis might only take a few seconds to explain clinically, but understanding what that diagnosis means for someone’s everyday life requires a different conversation. It made me wonder whether, as future physicians, we should spend just as much time learning how to translate medicine as we do in learning the science behind it.

That question lingered with me long after I left the hospital each day. When I shared these reflections with my classmate, McCartney Kirk, our conversations quickly evolved into a greater purpose. We began by asking ourselves a simple question: What if medicine could be explained in a way that was more approachable? Inspired by how short-form content has transformed learning across so many fields; we wondered if the same approach could help make health education more accessible. Rather than expecting people to come to us in a hospital or clinic, what if we met them where they’re already spending time learning – online through short-form educational videos on platforms like YouTube Shorts that offer explanations instead of confusion?

Those conversations eventually became the starting point for One Minute Medicine, a student-led initiative built on a simple idea: medicine shouldn’t feel inaccessible because it’s complex. Through concise, engaging, evidence-based videos, we aim to make medical information easier to understand for the public while helping future physicians become more effective communicators. Before patients can ask questions or participate in shared decision-making, they first need a chance to understand.

What We’ve Learned by McCartney Kirk

Creating One Minute Medicine has challenged us to practice patient-centered communication ourselves. Every script forces us to step back, and ask ourselves: Are we using too many clinical terms? Is this topic explained in a way that a patient could explain their condition to someone else? Could someone without a healthcare background understand this? In simplifying complex concepts for others, we’ve become more thoughtful communicators with our own patients and gained greater understanding of the conditions that we are explaining.

One Minute Medicine is a student-led health education initiative that creates short, physician-guided educational videos published through YouTube Shorts. We recently launched our first batch of videos covering obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN) and physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R), bringing together perspectives from two specialties to address common health questions in an approachable, conversational format. As the initiative grows, we are expanding our educational content to include neurology, gastroenterology (GI), otolaryngology (ENT), anesthesiology (ANES), dermatology (DERM), and surgery (SX). Our goal is to build a publicly accessible collection of short educational videos that people can revisit beyond the time constraints of a clinical visit.

Our topics are shaped by common health questions, misconceptions, and areas where accessible medical explanations can help people better understand their conditions. Medical students collaborate to research topics, develop scripts, and translate complex clinical information into plain language. To ensure accuracy and relevance, physicians within each respective specialty review the content before publication. This specialty-specific approach allows us to draw on the expertise of practicing physicians while giving medical students an opportunity to learn how to communicate medical information clearly.

Another facet of One Minute Medicine is the importance of health literacy. We often expect patients with no background knowledge to immediately understand the topics that we have spent years learning without even realizing it. Health literacy is not simply about whether someone can read medical information; it also involves whether they can access, understand, and use that information to make informed decisions about their health. By translating medical concepts into plain language and using familiar examples, we hope to help bridge that gap. Our intended audience is the general public, including patients, caregivers, and students who are beginning to navigate the healthcare system. Once available to the public, this resource has the potential to improve patients’ health literacy and help them use the knowledge gained during a physician visit to make informed decisions about their care. Improving health literacy continues to be an important priority for us as healthcare professionals. The better patients understand their diagnosis, the more confident they can be in actively participating in their care.

Since launching, the response to One Minute Medicine has been overwhelming in the enthusiasm and support we’ve received from across our medical school community. Medical students, residents, faculty, attending physicians and school leadership have expressed interest in the initiative, with many volunteering their time, expertise, and perspective to help develop and expand our content. This has reinforced our belief in the importance of accessible health education and has transformed what began as a conversation between two medical students into a collaborative, interdisciplinary effort.

We understand that a one-minute video will never replace the doctor-patient relationship, nor should it. Our hope is to make that relationship stronger. A short video cannot account for every patient’s circumstance, answer every question, or replace a conversation with a physician. But, if it can help someone better understand a diagnosis, recall an important discussion, or feel more comfortable asking a question at their next appointment, then it will have served its purpose.  

Along the way, it is also teaching us something just as valuable: becoming a great physician isn’t only about understanding the medicine, it’s about making medicine understandable.