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Administrative assistant, nurse and high school volunteer were just a few of the titles people assumed I was when they saw me sitting in the office of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. Often to their surprise, I was a medical student starting my summer research project between my first and second year. It became immediately clear that seeing a young woman associated with orthopedic surgery was not something many people were used to.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
An adolescent youth at Philadelphia FIGHT had an impressive display of might. / He could have easily passed as an adult / Although he didn’t look the sight he shared a complex story of plight / And the many woes in his life that he’s had to make right.
I’m an academic and an educator. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I chose to be treated in a university setting. It felt right to me, that if I had to go through the experience of breast cancer, that my body would become a teaching tool. It helped provide some form of meaning to the experience. It is with this lens that I found myself regretting not calling out to the clearly first-rotation medical student while in the emergency room.
Over the past few months, a recurring topic in news conversation has been the plight of refugees from Syria. Recently, European nations such as Germany have contemplated whether to extend asylum to many of the estimated 6.5 million individuals displaced within Syria, and the 3.5 million who have fled to neighboring nations. The Syrian Civil War began in 2011, and with growing instability in the region due to the growth of groups such as ISIS, much of the previous infrastructure has eroded, including the country’s health care and public health systems. There are a number of concerns for the health of refugees trapped in Syria, and for those who have found asylum in countries across the globe.
I am honored by this opportunity to offer you some advice on how to prepare for your professional career in what has become a treacherous health care system. I will not elaborate on why I think the health care system is “treacherous.” I will assume — and even hope — that you have at least some inkling that things are not rosy in the world of medicine.
“I didn’t know how good I was at science before I got to public school. When I was younger, I would always have free time to myself. I’d just roam around. Just like put stuff together, take things apart, just to see how things work. So, I always gravitated towards science. And just being around the hospital — I had no desire to fulfill it and be like ‘that’s what I’m gonna do.’
Stephanie Marango, MD, RYT is a physician-educator, yoga teacher trainer and author of The Wisdom of Your Body. In this interview, she tells us what led her down the path into integrative medicine.
Soon Floridians will be heading to the polls to vote in the upcoming election. Among important positions that will be voted upon, the decision to allow the sale of medical marijuana to qualified patients will be one of them. Currently there are 23 states that legalized the use of medical marijuana, including Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. In the previous general election of 2014, Florida marginally missed legalizing marijuana: 57 percent of voters said yes, but it takes 60 percent to make it into law.
She was a petite, otherwise well-appearing woman, apprehensively sitting at the edge of the examination table. Hoping to mask my nervousness about this first, intimate patient encounter, I inquired about the reason for her visit. She told me that she was here to discuss a hysterectomy. She shakily explained her two-year history of heavy, painful menstrual bleeding. She hoped that the hysterectomy would be her saving grace. The insistence on this procedure made me suspicious of stirring waters beneath calm surfaces, so I probed further.
Stamina waning / Along with my patience / For the number of patients / Presenting with an emesis of symptoms
For the majority of medical students, gross anatomy is the first time that we observe and cut into the flesh of preserved cadavers. Whether it is through a longitudinal year-round program or a semester’s worth of concentrated anatomy, most of us develop a unique relationship with the cadaver gifted to us by generous donors.
Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus
University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute
Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, 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. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.
