Tutorial Group

Learning in Med School

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by Month Three • Tags: ,

In medical school, learning takes on an entirely new personality and philosophy. It becomes more important. In fact, I would argue that long-term learning becomes paramount. While this is certainly similar for other professional degrees, what’s different is that once we hit the wards, the learning curve involves people’s lives. This makes learning in medical school is a lot different than learning calculus or physics because of the ways in which we must learn and study. Further, it’s different because of the sheer volume of information out there, which is not particularly well synthesized into bite-sized chunks. Thus, we learn what our professors think is “most important” and ignore the things that are merely “important.” So, then how do we gain confidence that we have the skills to put the pieces of the diagnoses and treatment puzzle together? At Harvard (and many other schools), the answer is something we call tutorial.

Tutorial, sometimes called small group learning, is a significant segment of every course we take. In my anatomy course, for instance, for every hour of traditional didactic lecture, we have about 50 minutes of regular tutorial, 1.5 hours of cadaver dissection (in small groups), and 1 hour of histology lab (again in small groups). Thus, the vast majority of our learning is in small groups, where we learn by doing. The key to this process is that the students do virtually all of the teaching and analysis. The “tutors,” professors, say very little during the discussion unless they are asked questions directly. Even then, they often redirect to the group. We go through real medical cases, wherein we have to come up with a complete differential diagnosis and subsequent treatment plan. What’s truly amazing is that as a group of eight or nine first-year medical students, we typically have the collective knowledge to solve most cases that we are given. Integration of the information into real cases is so important for solidifying understanding and promoting long-term learning.

We also use tutorial as half of the class time in our social medicine course, as we do in many of our courses. In this course, we might focus on social determinants of disease or on patient adherence to treatment regimens. One week, we were even tasked with designing a new health care system in a developing country. We come up with creative solutions to complex problems. This reinforces the idea that regardless of the innumerable barriers to health care treatment success, we have what it takes to devise solutions and deliver care. In any case, I feel I’m learning what it takes to be the kind of physician I want to be—well-rounded, compassionate, and thoughtful.

Despite the never ending databases of medical literature, we will learn what we need to learn. Participating in these small group tutorials makes me extremely confident in that. It is true that the biggest strength of any medical school is the student body. Learning from these people only makes sense in the inherently collaborative nature of our profession. One day, we will be making big decisions, and medical school will prepare us for that. As the days pass, we get better – I get better.

Woman with an Apple

Being Female in America: A Risk Factor

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by Month Two, Social Conscience • Tags: , ,

In my time here at HMS, I have had the pleasure of interacting with all kinds of people. I’ve of course interacted with my excellent colleagues, brilliant professors, trusted advisors, and a few living legends; however, no one has touched me like the patients I’ve spoken with while in clinic, my patient-doctor class, and in various other settings. These people are truly my greatest teachers. The lessons they teach me are often accompanied with a hodgepodge of emotions that make them so memorable. These are lessons one cannot learn from any textbook, case-study, or didactic lecture because they are taught by patients and reinforced by the feelings that arise when witnessing human suffering with my own eyes and ears. These experiences change me. They make me more aware. I want to share, with her permission, a small anecdote from one such person who touched my life in an everlasting way. I shall call her Mrs. L. (That has no relation to her actual name).

Mrs. L is a woman from the northeastern United States. She holds a doctoral degree and suffers from anorexia nervosa. This disease disproportionately affects young women, which is well documented in the literature. She has suffered from this debilitating disease since early adolescence. She is in extremely poor physical health because of her illness. Looking at her is emotional for me because she is severely emaciated, weighing far less than 70 lbs. There is little flesh covering her bones, making them very distinct and identifiable through her skin. There was one story she told to a classmate of mine, who was actually asking the questions, that I’ve been thinking about ever since. She told a story of an experience she had while acting as a pre-teen model where she had gained a few pounds since her previous weigh-in. Mrs. L goes on to explain that she was chastised because of this sudden gain. She remembers thinking to herself, “I’m twelve; am I supposed to weigh XX lbs. forever?” She then remarked on the fact that she weighs exactly XX lbs. today.

Mrs. L, like many other women who suffer from disease, is a victim of acts of verbal and societal violence. This is not something she did; it is something that was done to her. Diseases like anorexia bring up all kinds of questions of whom/what is responsible, who/what is to blame, and what can be done about it. In my opinion, our society has substantial culpability in Mrs. L’s suffering. Modeling agents are only a reflection of society. Things like Photoshop further exacerbate the situation by presenting an unattainable form of “beauty” as a standard. As Jean Kilbourne pointed out, Cindy Crawford even once stated, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford.” As part of society, I too share some of this responsibility. This both saddens and angers me, especially because I see where this societal view manifests itself in my own perception of female beauty.

To better understand my role in this, I took an online implicit association test (IAT) to see if I had an implicit bias against people who are classified as obese. As I suspected, I do. And per the results of Harvard’s Project Implicit, so do the overwhelming majority of people who took such a test. I understand that our personal biases can affect the quality of care we deliver. So, what do I do about it? After some reflection and deep thought, I came up with little or nothing I could do that would truly impact the way society views beauty in women or the ways that this ideology negatively affects women’s health. However, I have committed myself to being hyperaware of my biases and being extremely vigilant in ensuring that they never affect the quality of care I provide. This is only a small and very personal step in the right direction. This is not going to help people like Mrs. L or future Mrs. L’s for that matter. I suppose I could join an advocacy group, but are they even effective? How do we address the pressures that young girls feel to fit a certain mold? Is education an affective tool? Is it even possible to change this in a meaningful way? I don’t know, but I hope someone figures it out so that I can stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution.

HMS Lecture Hall

The Transition

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by Month Two • Tags: , ,

Medical school has a way of changing the way a person operates. The culture just grabs you, snatches you up, and holds you very close until you succumb to its demands…You study! You study hard! It’s kind of weird the way it happens though. It’s not like most of us make the conscious decision to spend our Saturdays in the library. It’s an involuntary reaction that is akin to a reflex or a yawn. You can’t stop it. It controls you; the culture controls you. Everyone around you is studying. There is so much information. None of us know all of it, but we feel that we are supposed to. Furthermore, we want to. Thus, we find ourselves, as I did last Saturday night, studying at 2 a.m. Sunday morning continuing our 15 hour Saturday study marathons. After six or seven hours of sleep, we’ll wake up and start the entire process over again. This process would continue every day thereafter, until the culmination of MCM (biochemistry and cell biology)—the final exam on Friday.

HMS Library 

That morning I slept little, the bare minimum to keep my neurons firing —about 2 hours. I walked into the exam at 8:30 feeling very uncomfortable. This was a feeling I was not accustomed to in an exam setting. I have never felt that I wasn’t prepared for an exam until Friday. There was just so much to know and so little time to learn. Thus, I tried, day in and day out, to get this stuff filed away in my brain in some order that I would be able to access later. I watched virtually every lecture for a second time. I reviewed all of my notes. I read two separate textbooks. Still, I had trouble remembering what bcr-abl stood for or how exactly nucleotide metabolism integrated with the other topics. I felt overwhelmed for about 30 seconds right before the exam, but I took a deep breath and walked reluctantly into that auditorium, #2 pencil in hand.

Although it may not seem like it, making this transition was relatively easy because it’s not as if I actually had a choice in the matter. I think the hardest part is coming to terms with the fact that I have little option but to study. As young medical students, we must think about this stuff day and night if we want to have any shot at speaking intelligently about it on the wards in two years. In fact, just this morning I woke up thinking about the biochemical pathways by which adrenaline relaxes certain muscles, while increasing the contractility of others in our fight or flight response. And just like that, with the mention of it while writing this blog, I’ve been sidetracked for the last five minutes thinking about those pathways all over again. It’s absolutely amazing how medicine has a way of permeating every aspect of my life, as it has many others who have gone before me. I suspect it will be the same for those that follow.

Panoramic view of Harvard Medical School

Deciding What to Learn

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by Month One •

Here I am, week 6 of medical school. Intro to the Profession is becoming a fond but distant memory. The Molecular and Cellular Basis of Medicine course, or MCM (what we call biochemistry), will come to an end in just a week and a half. Then, I will spend the next 5 weeks learning as much about human anatomy as I can. I’m starting to get the feeling that this medical school thing is going to be finished before I can take a breath, before I am completely comfortable with my level of knowledge. That feeling is somewhat overwhelming. As a physician, I will have people’s lives in my hands, but the word “hands” is only a metaphor, and an overly simplistic one at that. I wish being responsible for a person’s life was as simple as just holding on to a ball, an egg, or even a delicate flower, never letting it drop… never breaking it. However, the fact is that IT’S NOT! It’s not simple at all. The idea is supposed to be that I study cell signaling today so that I may save someone’s life or health 20 years from now. Is that a long time to remember something? Maybe, but that is not the problem for me. The problem is that I’m still not even close to comfortable with my level of knowledge on cell signaling, and we finished talking about many of those pathways last week. Now, I have new things to learn. So, it’s time to move on.

I probably don’t need to explicitly iterate this, but medical school is extremely fast-paced. The current body of medical knowledge is simply overwhelming to a young, and very green, 1st year medical student. A simple PubMed search for “diabetes” yields 414,545 peer-reviewed journal articles, which would literally take me 10 lifetimes to fully understand. When doing a search for the word “cell,” the results yielded a whopping 4.79 million articles! How in the world am I going to acquire the knowledge I need? How can I distinguish the absolutely essential information from the merely very important, or that from the somewhat important, or the somewhat important from the rarely relevant, which someday may prove to be essential for any one of my many patients? What may not seem important to even the most reputable experts, whom I have the distinct honor of learning from daily, may prove to be vital to saving my patient’s life in the future. I understand that my professors have to filter out the “less important” stuff (and I’m sure they’d love to teach it), but the fact is that it’s all important, or it could be. However, they only have four years to teach us. So, the question becomes what do I learn? How can I cope with my inadequate level of knowledge? How will I be able to do that in 20 years?

I can tell you that I have no clue what the answers to my questions are. I have no cure for my self-doubt. It’s absolutely frightening! This medicine thing is an extremely imperfect science loaded with judgment calls made considering only one’s own, and often biased, knowledge of statistical likelihoods. What happens to the small percentage of the people who aren’t within the norm? And to those people who have illnesses with mechanisms that I did not deem worthy of my effort to learn? They die. They become permanently disabled. They suffer immense pain. Am I okay with that? Does it just come with the territory? I don’t know, and I probably never will. What I do know is that now—the second month of medical school— is the time for me to start becoming somewhat comfortable with my very limited knowledge. I’m trying very hard, but so far, it seems to be am exercise in futility. I’m afraid my conscience may do me more harm than good. I hope that in my career I will be able to cope with the guilt associated with having a limited knowledge of the human body, despite there being an abundance of information out there. I will try to do the best that I can, but I am only a human being with a very limited capacity for storing information. That is a truth that continues to haunt me.

Devon's Childhood Home

What Does it Mean to be Disadvantaged?

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by Month One • Tags: , ,

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been involved with various institutional organizations, programs, and initiatives that focus on some sort of inequity or disadvantage. I’ve attended an SNMA (Student National Medical Association) regional conference, meetings for social activism, meetings for groups that work with disadvantaged high-schoolers, diversity committee meetings, talks about race related health disparities, and other related functions. Because the perception of my story is one of overcoming seemingly insurmountable adversity, my classmates tend to approach me regarding social justice issues. I think my classmates know that I am extremely passionate about issues of race, class, and gender related disparities, both in health and in other areas (e.g. education). They are probably also correct to believe that my background afforded me a unique set of experiences that ostensibly prime me for a career in that field. Further, they are correct in their belief that these issues are very personal to me because they directly affect those closest to me. Although they are certainly correct about these issues, I think many fail to appreciate the nuances in the mechanisms that underlie systems of privilege and how those may have directed my course.

My classmates and others tend to view me as a person who was extremely disadvantaged and underprivileged—a person who had next to nothing going for him. That sentiment couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, I am, and have always been, a very privileged person. First and foremost, I was born in a country where there is some mechanism for class mobility, albeit a pretty ineffective one. Not unlike President Obama, I am widely accepted as “black,” but I am in fact half “white,” which affords me some level of unfair societal advantage. Yes, I was born poor, but to a strong mother who did not succumb to the pressures of poverty; she was not drug addicted, abusive, or willing to give up on her children. I had a stable father figure in my house; he entered my life when I was very young and did not leave until he passed a few years ago. I lived in a household that obeyed the law, enforced personal responsibility, and essentially created a home environment that would allow its progeny to prosper. I would often be told to “look outside.” “What you see is not normal. This is not how we want you to live.” My parents managed to do this even though they both worked very long hours. I never wondered whether my parents cared for me. I never wondered if I would eat the next day. I never wondered if we would have heat in the winter. (Despite having heat, our very old house was so poorly insulated that we had to cover all windows with sheet upon sheet of heavy  plastic.) My parents essentially created a positive microenvironment (that was not unlike those of the most privileged) in the midst of an extremely destructive macroenvironment. It is no coincidence that none of my siblings have turned to crime, illicit drugs, or other deviant behavior. In fact, we have all done very well, and my younger sister even graduated college with a 4.0 GPA as well (before I did). There was certainly something special about what my parents did in that little house on Hazelton St. Were people murdered, mugged, and jumped on a regular basis in my neighborhood? Yes. Were drugs and gangs out of control? Yes. Have I heard my fair share of gun shots and bullets whizzing? Yes. But, my mom and step-dad did their best to protect us from that horror.

When I reflect on these things, I have mixed emotions about the impact that my story could have. On one hand, I feel compelled to share my story with kids that are growing up in neighborhoods like mine. Perhaps I can be a symbol of hope for a few kids that would otherwise feel hopeless. I might even be an effective mentor to people who will come after me and who have encountered similar obstacles. On the other hand, I feel danger because the things that privileged me aren’t necessarily easy to measure. How would one measure the effectiveness of parenting in those who managed to defy the statistics? How can someone who has felt extreme pressure to turn to a life of crime be compared to me and my comparatively low pressure situation? I never felt desperate for food, shelter, or other basic needs. So, I often wonder if someone will pervert my story (and similar stories) in order to make the claim that the American Dream is truly tangible for all people and that there aren’t true social mobility issues? Will someone tout me as proof that these issues of virtuously ubiquitous race-related disparity are fallacious? Will people say that I had it just as bad as anyone else? The fact is that people often use the exception to the rule as evidence that the rule doesn’t actually exist. Examples of outliers can be used to champion initiatives that will continue to widen the gap of disparity, and I hope I am never one of those exceptions.

I’ve said all of that to say this:

We are culture of people who are in love with our own hard work and laurels. However, as individuals, we must acknowledge the privileges and unfair advantages that were integral to our various achievements. We’ve all encountered hardship, but not at the level of the people who continue to see generation after generation go to prison and die at the hands of others.  Yes, young disadvantaged kids can achieve their dreams, BUT it takes a person or people to intervene when at critical stages of development. That could be a parent, a school teacher, a physician, or a lowly first-year medical student. I urge everyone, if you are in a position to do so, to help change the life of just one child. I’m living proof that it makes a world of difference. Get involved. Stay involved. You can save someone’s life!

Party in Newton

Humanity in the Basic Sciences?

by Month One • Tags: , ,

I have to admit that when I was sitting in my buddy Eran’s backyard at his beautiful Newton, Massachusetts home, I wasn’t exactly excited about my first week of biochemistry, which was to start the following day. You see, I was just trying to enjoy my Labor Day with a few friends, some great food, and even better conversation. I definitely did not want to think about school or how it was about to morph from the social and personal perspective of medicine, taught in ITP, to an extremely objective and scientific perspective, which is conveyed in MCM (Molecular and Cellular Basis of Medicine…what we call biochemistry, genetics, and cell bio). I just wanted to focus on devouring the perfectly executed gorgonzola cheeseburger Eran had grilled and then placed in front of me. Although we definitely enjoyed ourselves and shared great laughs around that patio table, the event became somewhat imbrued by a general preoccupation with the arduous journey we were about to embark on – basic science medical education. This was especially hard because Eran and a few others were off to their segregated studies of the Harvard-MIT joint medical program called HST. This meant that I would no longer have classes with Eran or my other HST friends, which was also a source of sadness. Before we knew it, everyone “had to go;” the sun was not even close to setting. What kind of BBQ ends at five? Not one I’ve ever attended. Despite the veil of excuses, everyone knew what was going on here—it was time to gear up for medical school!

Ever since Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report on medical education in America, which called for the incorporation of more rigorous scientific education in medical curricula, the first couple of years of medical school have largely focused on biological and biochemical sciences and their fundamental basis in the field of human medicine. Like many others, this made me fearful that I would begin to lack empathy for patients by virtue of viewing them through a series of analytical prisms. Perhaps I would start to divorce these things from the human experience. I am terrified of becoming callus to the human suffering of which we make a commitment to help alleviate. As another HST friend of mine, David Gootenberg, so eloquently (and candidly) put it, “diseases and disorders aren’t interesting; they’re tragic.” (I must say that I could not have said it better myself, so I didn’t even try.) He’s exactly right! We hear this all of the time in the basic sciences—diseases and their processes are “interesting.” However, we rarely take the time to address the tragic nature of diseases: how they destroy families, how they wipe out entire populations, how they prey on the weak, etc. These “interesting” diseases have dire implications and cause immeasurable human suffering. As medical students and medical professionals, we must never divorce the idea of human suffering from the scientific aspects of disease. We must remember that we are here to help the sick and dying. We have a duty much bigger than biological science can account for, and medical education is finally starting to reflect those virtues again.

Today I completed my first full week of MCM, and I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by a few things. First, I get what people are talking about when they say that this biochemistry stuff is interesting! I was literally on the edge of my seat throughout the entire hemoglobin and RNA processing lectures. At first, I was shocked at how interested I became, but then I realized that I was interested because the lecturers consistently bridged the gap of context and relevance. This made this stuff real to me, whereas before it seemed more akin to wizardry or street magic. Furthermore, we have clinic days where real patients come to our classes so that we can see how these pathologies manifest themselves in human beings. What better way to correlate human suffering with these very tedious biochemical processes? As apprehensive as I was about delving into the multiple minutiae that biochem has to offer, it turns out it’s not so bad after all. The basic science aspect of medical education is quickly evolving into a more comprehensive type of education, and I think we’ll be better for it.  I’m truly excited about the things I’ll learn next week! Until then, take care my friends.

"Swimmers" in the Atrium

Future Doctors: Studying Medicine with a Social Conscience

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by Month One • Tags: , ,

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I could do this forever! Dr. Treadway’s Intro to the Profession (ITP) course ended far too quickly! The class brought to light several interesting aspects of medical professionalism, cultural competency, and general principles of doctoring. This week we had more training with high-fidelity mannequins. We also discussed a book that dealt heavily with cultural competency in medicine, engaging in important conversations about the ways that culture, socioeconomic status, and religion affect quality of care. However, the highlight of this course was clearly the case study on an HIV-positive patient.

Over a period of two days, we studied the case of a patient who had acquired HIV in the late 1980′s, before antiretrovirals were available. In small groups, we watched vignettes of the patient who was being interviewed about his medical condition. Not yet  aware of his infection, the class watched as he described his first bout with polycystic pneumonia (PCP), a kind of pneumonia that was a hallmark complication of people with HIV at the time. He described his illness in depth, including his near-death experiences, his arduous drug regimens, and physical incapacitations. He also went into great detail about his mental health, his personal life, and his social history. We, a group of nine, decided that the next course of action was to test him for HIV.

After watching the videos that followed, the class discovered the man was, in fact, HIV-positive and how that impacted his life. He talked about losing faith in his physician and being able to find another top doctor that could help him. At the end of the second day, we actually got to meet him and hear him tell his story; that “second doctor” was there with him. Oddly, it was much harder to hear his story from him in person than it was to learn about it via video clips. In fact, it moved me to tears to hear him tell his very painful story. He cried. I cried. Moving…

However, one part of the interview really stuck out to me. He was asked what percentage of people who contracted HIV when he did lived to tell the story. His response was “I don’t know, 10% or fewer.” He was right; the outlook was that grim at the time. But my question became what made him special? Why did he survive when so many others didn’t? I became preoccupied with that point of contention.

The fact is, this man was extremely privileged in virtually every way other than his disease status and his sexual preference. This was by his own admission. He stated his status of extreme privilege time and time again. I believe that because of his race, class, and socioeconomic status, he was uniquely empowered in the medical arena. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he survived while upwards of 90% of others did not. While ITP was an absolutely amazing experience, I truly wish we could have seized the moment and talked about substantive issues regarding systems of privilege and oppression.

Talking about Issues of Race and Health Care Disparities

Two of my role models, and second year students at HMS, Kai and Garrett, helped devise a way that our class could demonstrate our desire to talk more deeply about issues of race and the health care disparities that are the results of racial biases. They are part of a coalition of Harvard medical students called the Race In Curriculum Working Group (RICWG), who share my desire to have more substantive discussions about race and oppression. There has been some apprehension by the course director because the belief is that many students may not be ready to have these very uncomfortable discussions about systems of privilege. We desire to make that a key underlying theme of the ITP course.

Eight of my class members and I joined the RICWG in a demonstration on Thursday afternoon when the course ended. Because the faculty was concerned about our class’s ability to “swim” during these conversations and that some students may “drown,” we developed the slogan, “I can swim.” Students willing to swim were supposed to write the words “I can swim” in the end-of-course critiques. We made thousands of flyers with our faces on them, informing the class that we can swim and asked them if they could too. We strongly believe our classmates can swim,; they are ready, and we are ready.  We canvased the atrium of the medical education building with the posters, putting them on busts of famous doctors—literally changing the faces of medicine. Then, as the class left the auditorium for the last session of ITP, thousands of flyers rained down from the fourth floor of the TMEC atrium while we blasted the edited version of Lil Wayne’s, Make it Rain (all expletives removed). Everyone was shocked!

Afterward, we sat down and talked to course director, Dr. Kate Treadway and Dean of Students, Dr. Nancy Oriol. Much to our surprise, they were very receptive to our ideas. In fact, they were touched by our dedication to the subject matter. That reaction meant more to me than they will ever know. Today’s medical education is cultivating a different breed of doctors.  We are a generation of doctors with a social conscience. Our generation will greatly mitigate the social and racial determinants of health in America and abroad. I have never been more proud of a group of people to which I belong. Thank you HMS class of 2016! I love you!

White Coat Day - Harvard Medical School

Welcome to Med School

by August • Tags: , ,

Wow, I can’t believe my first week of medical school is already over! I can truly say it was one of the best and most memorable weeks of my life. From white coat day to simulating trauma cases with high-fidelity mannequins, this week was full of excitement because it focused on “doctoring.” It’s the reason why my 199 classmates and I are here to begin with—we want to be doctors! If it was the intention of HMS to get us excited about our future professions, I say job well done!

Day One: White Coat Ceremony and First Patients

The excitement on white coat day was electrifying. After we donned our new, pristine white coats, we spoke a few words about ourselves and the class headed off to see our first patients. Day one, and we are seeing our first patients? Yes! There they were, two little girls sitting in the front of the auditorium, portraits of famed doctors peering down at them. Our class filed in wondering what could possibly be amiss with these two beautiful little girls. It turns out that these two young ladies had a serious genetic disorder called cystic fibrosis, which often leads to serious problems in the pancreatic duct and in the lungs. Those two little girls essentially served as our teachers for that hour, answering every question with great excitement. They not only taught us about cystic fibrosis, but they taught us about what it’s like to be a child dealing with a severe illness and participate in a clinical trial for an experimental drug. But whatever they taught us, —and they taught us so much, they did it with great style, enthusiasm, and candor. They were so giving, expressing their most intimate details of their disorder. It was interesting for me to see how personal the interaction between patient and doctor felt when viewed from the other side of the conversation. It’s as if they would tell me anything… All I had to do is ask. I learned that the patient-doctor relationship must be one filled with love, respect, and compassion. I’ll never forget them or their contribution to my education; they were fantastic.

Day Two: Boston Children’s Hospital

The next day my classmate Lulu and I were sent to interview a patient at Boston Children’s Hospital. This time it was only two of us. I was a little nervous walking into the room; I think Lulu was, too. We saw a new mother holding her four-day-old son, caressing his head gently.  Also nestled in her arms was an illuminated green pad. I thought that seemed a little odd, but I pressed on and we introduced ourselves. What happened next shook me to my core:  The  mother hurried to put her baby down on the bed, which had a bright blue lamp over it, so that we (two medical students in their second day of training) could “do what we need to do” with her son. It was then that I realized the immense power and responsibility that comes along with wearing that white coat. She trusted us, but I wondered why. The extreme deference she showed to us I thought was unwarranted.  We didn’t even know what those lights were for! As it turned out, the young boy had jaundice, and the wavelength of blue light helps rid the body of excess bilirubin. But we weren’t there to poke and prod the child; we were there to ask a few questions and gain some experience. We asked her what we could do to be good doctors, what advice she might have for us. She said simply, “It helps to smile.” I always do that, so that should pose no problem for me.

In interacting with these patients and others this week, I realized that patients are often our most important teachers. They bring with them wisdom that cannot be acquired from a textbook, medical journal, or endowed Professor of Medicine. They are arguably the most important part of medical education. They’re certainly the highlight of my day and the reason I’m here. I hope to continue to learn from my patients, so that my patients can benefit from the best care that I am capable of providing.

Onward to week two!

Devon and Family

It’s finally here!

by Orientation • Tags:

Wow! I can’t believe it’s finally here; school starts tomorrow! It came so quickly. As I reflect upon my first week in Boston and anticipate the week ahead, I get even more excited.

Over the last several days, I have gotten to know many of my classmates very well through a voluntary pre-matriculation program called the First-Year Urban Neighborhood Campaign, or FUNC. This week-long program focused on service to the community and cultural awareness. We met for breakfast before heading off to the Roxbury Boys and Girls Club to teach minority students about science and show them how it can be fun. We conducted science experiments, built solar-powered cars, made Oobleck (which I highly recommend), built electrical circuits, and extracted DNA from strawberries. The kids also came to the medical school one day to experience seeing and touching human organs, viewing human cells through microscopes, and trying to assist a mannequin who was having a simulated asthma attack. Programs like this play an integral part in getting minority children interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, and I am so glad to have taken part in it.

After we left the children each day, we spent several hours discussing the –isms (i.e. racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc.). All I can say is “Wow!” We really hashed out the dirty details of some pretty charged issues. Not only did we learn a lot about each other, but we also learned a lot about ourselves. Although FUNC is unique to Harvard, I know that many other medical schools have pre-matriculation programs that one can participate in. I highly suggest them. They are not only extremely enriching experiences, but they provide great bonding time for you and your future classmates!

Although this past week has been one of my most enjoyable, it hasn’t been all peaches ‘n’ cream. I’ve been trying to balance FUNC with trying to find a home for myself and my family. Although this may seem like an easy task, it definitely isn’t easy in Boston. There simply aren’t many apartments on the market here and no leasing agents seem to have the time to call me back. I’m willing to pay nearly double what I was paying in Virginia Beach and more than triple what I would pay in my home town of Flint, MI, but I still cannot find anything! For now, a classmate of mine and her husband are allowing me to use their empty apartment. Although I am confident that I will eventually find a place,  I would do it much differently if I had another go at it. So, please learn from my mistake and take care of your housing arrangements as soon as you decide on your school; you won’t regret it!

Well, that brings us to today – the night before my first day of school. Today I’ve experienced the expected hodgepodge of emotions, everything from excitement to nervousness. I tried to relax by going to get some food in Little Italy with my lady, Adrienne, which was great. I also met up with some of my classmates to get to know some of the non-FUNCers. However, none of that seemed to subdue my constant focus on what lies ahead. It’s like I’ve been waiting my whole life for this very moment. I doubt I’ll sleep well tonight, but I’ll try because tomorrow is going to be a long day! We are beginning our orientation and starting our first class, Introduction to the Profession (ITP), a two week course. I’m extremely excited for our White Coat Ceremony on Tuesday, the second day of class, which I think is fairly unique in that parents aren’t invited. Altogether, I suspect it’s going to be a really fun and intense week. I can’t wait to let you know how it goes. Take care.