Project 2 Honors Medical Scholars Society -Final Draft

Marya Ali

Mat Wenzel

ENC 2135-63

November 5, 2017

Project 2 Honors Medical Scholars Society:

As a new student aiming to be a physician, it can be overwhelming to think about how much knowledge and wisdom I will have attain to reach that position. To students who have been inspired by the sciences and find themselves pursuing the art of medicine on a pre-medical track, physicians may seem like a very far goal to reach. They appear that they are able to stay calm in any situation, to deliver optimal care to each and every patient, are full of knowledge and wisdom, and are the image of everything prospective physicians hope to encompass. With all of this to learn over the many year path to becoming a physician, it can appear wearying and confusing as to how to gain all of this wisdom and where to even start. The goal of the Honors Medical Scholars Society (HMSS) is to help shape its members into truly prospective physicians and expose them to these aspects of medicine to help guide us on our paths to becoming doctors.

The goal of HMSS is to develop physicians with the focus on emphasizing patient centered care and response to community needs. Brianna Zuckerman, one of the second year members of HMSS, says, “HMS shapes students into “prospective physicians” because it enables them to practice medicine as more than academia. It enables them to learn truly patient centered humanistic care. Patient centered care is an important value and practice for a doctor that is being discussed. It is the type of care that focuses on the patient’s needs while being respectful and responses to them as an individual. It also encourages them to want to treat all patients, especially the underserved, while being realistic about the challenges involved and the work it takes.” During HMSS meetings, a number of speakers ranging from doctors and nurses to community leaders in health come to hold panels and discussions about many health related topics including underserved populations, those who suffer from abuse or abusive communities, patients with HIV and AIDS, how to care for patients while managing your own well being, how to deliver tragic news yet still inspiring hope in your patients, and more. One of the topics that particularly caught my attention has been the discussion on how to provide optimal patient centered care to your patients while not “getting too involved” in the patient’s situation to where it affects your own well-being and performance with other patients. This was very interesting because in order to provide optimal patient centered care, physicians need to empathize with their patients to a certain degree in order to consider the best treatment options from their perspective and considering which options would be not only the most effective but also the most agreeable for this individual. Especially in circumstances with patients with trauma, life threatening diseases, or injuries from situations involving abuse, it can seem hard to not be saddened or hurt by empathizing with their situations. However, physicians have a duty to find this balance of understanding and care to bring the best treatment and help that they can to patients. Meetings with discussions in these deep topics help students begin thinking like physicians. HMSS students are prompted to consider many aspects of a story including what we believe the person is struggling with and how would these situations are approached. An important part of these discussions in deep analytical thinking to think of questions about different aspects of situations such as these that physicians and other medical professionals work with. The more these situations are discussed and the more years of experience and wisdom that is shared, the closer these students feel to reaching that role of a physician and becoming more familiar with the dynamic of that role.

A lot of the ideals and teachings of HMSS are reflective of important trends in medicine especially those to train prospective physicians to begin thinking with the mindset of a physician as well as about the importance of the humanistic side to the care of the medicine. In the article Integrating Caring into Patient- Centered Care through Interprofessional Education and Ethics: The Caring Project. by Jane S. Mahoney, they emphasize how “In an era of health care that is driven by biological and technical advances, there is a need to safeguard the caring component of care.” Patient-centered care sounds like something that should be very obvious for medical practice. However, this term is important to instill in even prospective physicians because it emphasizes the humanistic and personal caring side of medicine that allows physicians to provide patients with the best care they can by taking into careful consideration the feelings and needs of every individual and simply showing that they care. This is a topic that is discussed frequently in HMSS. During one of our meetings, Professor Ziegler, our speaker for the day, made a point that stuck as very important in my mind. He emphasized how it did not matter which schools physicians had gone to or what their MCAT scores were. At the end of the day, he told us that what really makes patients choose their physicians is if they feel like this person cares about them that is if they take the time to show that they are really there, that they remember important aspects of their patients’ lives, and that they are understanding and responsive. These values are reflected in the personal style of the service work we conduct. Brianna Zuckerman responded in her interview sharing that, “We go to places like the Big Bend Homeless Coalition, the Kearney Center, and Riverchase Care Center to not only form bonds with those people but also to learn more about their lives from a personal perspective.” At the end of every summer, HMSS students hold a service trip to Immokalee to work with the underserved population of migrant workers there. During this trip, HMSS participates in the Lipman Backpack give away as well as in a college application workshop for STRIDE students there. During the Lipman Backpack give away, we assist the organization in handing out school backpacks and school supplies to the children. We also host a booth with the FSU College of Medicine representatives to hand out backpacks with health related items such as hand sanitizer and sunscreen as well as informational packets about applying to FSU for college. This event is special because we are also able to give the children of this community a day of play and encourage fun exercise by playing soccer and other sports that they like with them. During the second half of this service trip, HMS hosts a presentation and panel at the Immokalee Technical College with the local high school students involved with the SSTRIDE program hosted by FSU. This particular program and panel is a workshop for STEM oriented students in Immokalee who are interested in applying to college to pursue education in the field they are interested in. This workshop is important because there is a serious lack of college counselors in this town and most of these students will be the first in their family to go to college. I was able to provide a particularly large amount of insight as the only incoming freshman on the trip as I had just recently completed the college application process and was the most currently fluent in the information. This was a wonderful opportunity to not only bring this information to these students but also to form closer relationships with them and work closely with them on their worries and hopes for college. By doing this, we are able to do service work as well as get to know the students of this community on a more personal level letting us explore sides of the service all of which are essential for physicians and are being emphasized more and more.

While physicians are highly skilled professionals who have conquered rigorous learning, it is important especially for prospective physicians to remember that physicians are human just like anyone else who have their individual feelings and can make mistakes. An important part of the path to becoming a doctor includes realizing this and that a physician is not some absurdly hard to attain highly state but rather a highly educated human who works to serve society to the best of their ability based on informed judgment and knowledge. As Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu wrote in his article “Vulnerability and the Beginner’s Mind.”, where he appeared on the first day of a typical pre-med course wearing a traditional kimono and speaking in Japanese to gage the students’ responses and teach them the important lesson which he states “I told the students that the experience of vulnerability helps to develop humility for a lifelong commitment to self-reflection, rather than a detached mastery of a finite body of knowledge.” This discusses the idea of “putting yourself into the patients’ shoes” and learning new ways to better your practice by experiencing or relating to their situation in the hospital from multiple perspectives. There are some aspects that physicians may not realize about the treatment of patients if we are too focused on the knowledge of the subject rather than their personal feelings. This teaches a very important side to medicine that is essential to learn, the humanistic side. Through this, physicians are better able consider how to deliver the best patient care they can provide. HMSS encourages this attitude and flexibility of mind by holding group reflection sessions on our work after each volunteering opportunity or service trip we participate in or host. Similarly, as Brianna Zuckerman elaborated in her interview, “We choose to do service that isn’t glamorous, but makes a difference and gives us valuable experience in learning people’s diverse backgrounds.” HMSS believes it is very important to expose its pre-med students to many aspects of the health field. This can help students bridge the gap and grow on their path to becoming physicians and realizing that even physicians are always learning and improving can be comforting. What distinguishes physicians is there acceptance of situations and their drive to constantly seek knowledge to improve their practice.

One of the services that we conduct that has really struck me this year is the one where HMSS visits the Riverchase Health and Rehabilitation Center in Quincy, Florida every couple weeks. My first experience volunteering here was very impactful, and I believe my fellow freshmen that went felt the same way. Despite having very different reactions to the heavy atmosphere of the rehabilitation center, it was evident to me that my peers had learned an important lesson alongside me that day. The building seemed rather confining, and upon entry, without knowing what to expect, we found ourselves greeted by older people with different disabilities throughout the area. We had brought coloring books, nail polish, and other artistic activities to engage the residents there with. Despite our energy, we found majority of them to be lacking the enthusiasm to participate or were unable to due to disability, which was disheartening at first since we were hoping to improve their day by doing these activities with them. As freshmen, it was our first time to this center, and I noticed that we all reacted to this situation in different ways. Initially, some closed off, disheartened by the state many of these residents were in seeming to emphasize a little too much. However, I found myself, along with another HMSS student, changing our methods to match what the residents needed. Instead of having them color, I asked them what their favorite color was and questions about topics that they liked. I was delighted to notice an immediate change in their moods and their eagerness to share about topics that they enjoyed. This situation reminded me of the beginning of Wei Tang’s Emphasizing Humanities in Medical Education: Promoting the Integration of Medical Scientific Spirit and Medical Humanistic Spirit which states, “"To Cure Sometimes, To Relieve Often, To Comfort Always"…It is a reminder that the duties of medical practitioners are not limited to the treatment of disease, but also include relieving and comforting patients. "To Relieve Often, To Comfort Always" is an expression of humanistic spirit; if humanistic spirit were to be divorced from medical practice, then the essential goal of medicine would be betrayed.” In retrospect, I am very happy that I was able to do what I did that day or really anything that was able to make their faces light up because, even from psychology, we are taught that love plays a large role in the self-healing process and that is why patient-centered care, which shows love, is so important. Just as Wei Tang describes and as I am learning along with the rest of my HMSS family, this humanistic side of medicine is the true root and purpose of the practice, and it is essential for us to always remember that and to make it a daily practice to truly devote ourselves to this art of caring.

Works Cited:

1.)

Mahoney, Jane S. Integrating Caring into Patient- Centered Care through Interprofessional Education and Ethics: The Caring Project. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1 Sept. 2017.

2.)

Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen. “Vulnerablility and the Beginner’s Mind.” The Clinical Teacher.

3.)

Tang, Wei. “Emphasizing Humanities in Medical Education: Promoting the Integration of Medical Scientific Spirit and Medical Humanistic Spirit.” BioScience Trends, 1 Apr. 2017.

4.)

Zuckerman, Brianna. Personal Interview. 6 Oct. 2017.

Bibliography:

1.)

Bannon, Aidan. “Reaching Out: Medical Students Leading in Local Communities.” Centre for Medical Education, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK, 2015

2.)

Doering, Alex, Makowski, Suzana, Ramus, Seth. “The Undergraduate Hospice Experience: A Way to Teach Pre-Med Students the Importance of Compassionate Patient Care.” ClinicalKey, 1 Feb. 2015.

3.)

Kennedy, Amanda, Farmer, Jane, Dickson-Swift, Virginia, Hyett, Nerida. “Community Participation for Rural Health: A Review of Challenges.” 2014

4.)

Kertesz, Stefan. “Priorities in the Primary Care of Persons Experiencing Homelessness: Convergence and Divergence in the Views of Patients and Provider/Experts.” Patient Preference & Adherence, Dovepress, 1 Feb. 2016

5.)

Lakic Bilijana “Retrospective Analysis of the Role and Performance of Family Medicine versus Emergency Medical Services in the Pre- Hospital Management of Patients with AMI in Banja Luka.” Acta Medica Academia.2016

6.)

Mahoney, Jane S. Integrating Caring into Patient- Centered Care through Interprofessional Education and Ethics: The Caring Project. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 1 Sept. 2017.

7.)

Mott, Melissa L, Gorawara-Bhat, Rita, Marschke, Michael, Levine, Stacie. “Medical Students as Hospice Volunteers: Reflections on an Early Experiential Training Program in End-of-Life Care Education.”

8.)

Murphy-Shigematsu, Stephen. “Vulnerablility and the Beginner’s Mind.” The Clinical Teacher.

9.)

Tang, Wei. “Emphasizing Humanities in Medical Education: Promoting the Integration of Medical Scientific Spirit and Medical Humanistic Spirit.” BioScience Trends, 1 Apr. 2017.

10.)

Zuckerman, Brianna. Personal Interview. 6 Oct. 2017.