MedEx Day 11 - July 13, 2021

Today began with a medical student panel of rising M2s. During the panel, session topics discussed included the students' thoughts on the USC School of Medicine Greenville, personal statement writing, and interview prep/ assistance. My biggest takeaways from this panel were that (1) during a medical school interview, typically an expert in a field that you have taken interest in (whether through research or otherwise) will interview you, (2) the personal statement is the most important part of the application (or at least extremely important), (3) when writing a personal statement begin by writing three takeaways that you would like for the reader to get, and (4) many students discussed how great a tool Wix is for applications.

After this panel discussion, Tier III had a conference Zoom call with the Alzheimer's Association in SC. 3 patients and the director of the Greenville office were on the call. What impacted me from this discussion was that almost every physician these patients had interacted with was cold to them and did not make them feel like they were human anymore because of their Alzheimer's diagnoses. For me this was a reminder of many of my father's interactions with his healthcare providers when he began dialysis and for some parts of his transplant/ care afterwards. I distinctly remember healthcare providers spending less than 30 seconds in my father's room, giving my father the wrong diagnosis, and in some encounters, just not being friendly or warm/ downright angry and aggressive when any questions were asked. Many of these patients' experiences with physicians reminded me so much of my family's encounters with the healthcare system. The patients and director recommended that all of Tier III continue to develop a service orientation and social skills so that we will have a better bedside manner than many physicians today.

Later on in the day, AJ presented on the do's and don'ts of social media, which was a great reminder. Finally, Dr. Linton, from the Greenville Medical School discussed an interdisciplinary board case regarding a 15-year-old male who presented to the hospital with shortness of breath. Before describing the case further, let me say that an interdisciplinary board is just a presentation that highlights how different departments of medicine work together to provide care for a patient. In this specific case some of the teams highlighted were pediatric hematology, psychiatry, and surgery (among many others). The 15-year-old male had sickle cell disease and presented with left-sided chest pain and had previously had a splenectomy due to frequent sequestration (clotting events) of the spleen from erythrocytes. The patient complained of taking his daily medications because he, "just wanted to be a normal kid." Upon physical examination, he had an S3 heart murmur with gallop, a fever, tachycardia, hypoxia, and tachypnea. After this presentation, Tier III was assigned with the task of fulfilling the roles of the different departments of medical professionals/ coming up with a plan of care, while also researching possible diagnoses, lab orders, etc. I was assigned to the pediatric hematology group/ my role focuses on presenting his case to the larger group and discussing sickle cell anemia. This research experience bolstered my scientific inquiry and critical thinking skills as I had to think about what pertinent information to include and avoid from his presentation. It will also continue to improve my competency of written communication and my capacity for improvement, as I will be presenting this case/ my presentation in front of some medical students and physicians next week.