Contributing Writer
Oregon Health & Science University
Brett Lewis is a third year medical student at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland Oregon class of 2021. In 2014, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in public health with a minor in anthropology. After medical school, she worked as Program Coordinator of the UCSF HEAL Initiative, an organization that trains fellows from or who are dedicated to serving communities in Navajo Nation and countries such as Liberia, Haiti, and Mexico. She enjoys reading, running, and racing cyclocross in her free time. After graduating medical school, Brett would like to pursue a combined career in family medicine and psychiatry.
From a public health perspective, we in Oregon have nowhere near the number of cases as our northern neighbors in Washington, although with delayed testing it is hard to tell exactly how many people are infected. But as we continue to follow the pattern of disease spread that has been demonstrated in Wuhan and Italy, we can presume that things will only escalate from here. And with it, inequities will be laid bare.
In recent days, some medical schools have begun canceling rotations in the face of a growing pandemic. The halls of my own school have been abuzz with conversations of deans and students alike about how a medical school must operate during an outbreak.
It’s a common scenario: a male medical student and a female resident walk into a patient’s room together, and the patient automatically assumes that the man is the doctor, and the woman is the nurse.
Although I’ve spent only a mere two and a half years as a student in this world of medical education, it’s readily apparent that I fit into very few of the “typical medical student” patterns. I’m part of a small cohort of dual degree students. I’m nontraditional, having never considered becoming a physician until after I graduated from college in 2013. And I am a disabled woman.
Hybrid species, known collectively as chimeras from the eponymous ancient Greek myth of a lion-goat hybrid, arose from the wellspring of human imagination and creativity. With modern advancements in biotechnology, however, chimeras of a sort are less a myth and more of a reality.
Just as our vernacular has embraced the language of food to describe people, so too has the medical community used such language to describe disease.
I was sitting in on a patient visit with the attending physician and a senior medical student, and I could tell that both of them were trying to guide him back on track as gently as possible.
A recent publication in the Journal of Neurology caused significant outrage not only within a forum dedicated to Black doctors and trainees, but also in the medical community online at large. Much like the rest of the readers, I was deeply troubled and did not understand the purpose of the article.
She put down her drink, the corners of her mouth dropped slightly. “Oh, so a Caribbean medical school. What happened? You couldn’t get into a U.S. school?”
When contemplating a career in medicine as either a nurse practitioner (NP), physician assistant (PA) or physician, I entered unwittingly into a landmine of opinions tainted with undertones of interprofessional resentment.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) medicine is particularly appealing to those who wish to take their health into their own hands and remove costly, time-consuming physicians from the equation. Crucial, however, is the fact that these companies are independently run and thus are not regulated by any governing scientific body.
The news as of late reflects the dystopian status of present-day health care. Numerous states have stripped away fundamental reproductive rights by criminalizing abortion with ruthless disregard for anyone capable of becoming pregnant.
Contributing Writer
Indiana University School of Medicine
Jessica is a second-year medical student at the Indiana University Medical School. She previously attended Indiana University Bloomington, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience. She has a passion for promoting and protecting women's health as well as public health. In the future, she hopes to be not only be a physician but also a highly involved community member wherever she is. In her down time, Jessica enjoys painting, running, and cooking.
