Christy Adams, R.N. M.P.H. PhD – November 15th, 2019
Who is Dr. Adams? Dr. Adams is a registered nurse who also has a master’s in public health and a PhD in Nurse and Science and Healthcare Leadership. Dr. Adams is currently working in injury treatment development. Dr. Adams stopped doing clinical work in 2007, but still works at a trauma center and is specifically there to help injured patients. For a time, she also worked as a flight nurse. Dr. Adams’ Story As a child, Dr. Adams, wanted to be a marine biologist, but discovered that she would like to pursue nursing when she was in high school. As a high school student in Washington, Dr. Adams volunteered as a candy striper and believes that this position helped her learn what a hospital setting was like. After high school, Dr. Adams attended the University of Arizona-Tuscon in which she graduated in 1990. She was initially drawn to the ICU because of its fast pace and need for critical thinking. She obtained a critical care internship in which she got to assist in the surgical ICU. During this time, she recalled seeing a flight pad outside of the ICU and concluded that she wanted to be a flight nurse. She looked up what would be required of her in this profession and talked to professionals already in the field. While in the medical ICU, Dr. Adams obtained experience in liver failure and sepsis which gave her overall experience with how the lungs work in the body. Eventually, Dr. Adams decided that she wanted to be a traveling nurse. In order to become a traveling nurse, a person needs to sign up with a travelling agency and get sent to a hospital in need of a flight nurse. Prior nurse experience is essentially required. As a traveling nurse, she, at times, gets stuck with the crummy jobs, because of her brief time at the hospitals she helps with. She has one job with UC Davis and decided to stay in Sacramento after that. How many ICUs does UC Davis have and which one is the busiest? UC Davis has a couple of ICUs. Each one is busier than the other dependent on the time of the year. For example, the trauma ICU is typically busiest in the summers while the ones more related to disease are busier in the winter. Which ICU is the most emotionally challenging to work in? Dr. Adams stated that the neo-natal ICU is emotionally challenging. It takes the ability to compartmentalize one’s emotion (emotionally detach from a patient to a degree) while still having enough care for the patient to not take their treatment lightly. The neo-natal ICU is also a lot more challenging in general than other ICUs. A major cause of this is that the margin of error for infant treatment is a lot lower than with adults. In addition, a nurse in the neo-natal ICU may work shifts up to 12 hours long. How high quality is UC Davis’s trauma center? What does it take to work there? UC Davis is a level-one trauma center and is the only in the state to have dual-certification in different types of trauma. Being able to work at the UC Davis trauma center requires prior research experience and work experience in one position of injury prevention. In her position, does Dr. Adams need to report to a boss of some kind? On paper, Dr. Adams has a formal boss, but beyond sending a paper report now and again, she acts as her own boss. What is Dr. Adam’s typical day like? Her days always vary. She could be doing a webinar one day or meeting with a committee the next. What advice did Dr. Adams leave to the AMSA club members? Dr. Adams told the club members that everything they do, work, volunteer, and educational-wise, should be related to their ultimate educational plan. This is to help build up their resumes. Dr. Adams also advised the club attendees that they should be willing to build their skill set to reach their occupational goals. Getting whatever certifications possible and collecting whatever training they can get will help them become competitive in the fields of medicine they wish to pursue; it will also be beneficial to them and their patients in the future. Dr. Adams also urged the club members to produce good relationships with the nurses; some have been working for a long time in their profession and may know more than the doctor about certain procedures. Some also work long and tough schedules (such as neo-natal ICU nurses. If anything, Dr. Adams told the club attendees to trust their gut and be humble during their time becoming and working as medical professionals. They should “do their homework” and do whatever is necessary to reach their goals.
Theodore Wun, M.D, F.A.C.P. Who is Dr. Wun?
Dr. Theodore Wun is the Associate Dean for Research at UC Davis. He is a first-generation citizen of a Chinese immigrant parents. Although, he was born in Stockton, he grew in the bay area. He specializes in gastroenterology and is also a hematologist oncologist with his research specialty being in population research. As a part of UC Davis, he acted as a member of the of its admissions committee until he obtained his current position as a dean. What is the number one burnout specialty in the medical field? Being an emergency medical physician is the number one burnout specialty in medicine. Although Dr. Wun is still active at UC Davis in his dean’s position, his wife is retired after practicing 25 years as an emergency medical physician at Kaiser. What training does a person need to receive before they become a doctor? Becoming a doctor starts with 3-4 years of medical school. Though this typically starts with schoolwork, as of recently, potential doctors are now seeing patients frequently as a part of their introductory medical curriculum. After the first two years of med school, a potential doctor goes into what is referred to as a clinical clerkship. During a person’s third year, they decide which route of medicine they want to take. During their fourth year is when they choose a broad field of medicine that they wish to pursue. After medical school comes a residency. Which residency program a doctor end up in is determined by “The Match” where doctors rank the top programs they wish to attend and where the programs rank which students they want to attend their program. If a match is hit, then that student attends that specific program. Most residency programs last three years with their first year of residency being referred to as their post-graduate/PG-1 year or their intern year and it is during your residency where you receive they receive their core training. It is when they want to specialize even further where they apply for a fellowship. Certain sub-specialties will also require doctors to take a qualification exam every ten years. How is a nurse practitioner different from a nurse? A nurse practitioner is essentially the hybrid of a nurse and a physician. Unlike nurses, nurse practitioners can legally diagnose someone with a specific illness. They can also do other things that a regular physician can, but they still need to be loosely overlooked by a physician. This practice seems to be changing, however, with some nurse practitioners now able to do certain things that a normal physician would do without being overlooked by one. Though some of the things that a nurse practitioner does is the same as a regular physician, becoming a nurse practitioner does not take as long as a becoming physician. How has the field of cancer treatment changed since Dr. Wun started practicing medicine? Since Dr. Wun started practicing medicine, the field of cancer treatment has changed remarkably. To quickly define what cancer is, it is an accumulation of tumor cells that can invade the immune system. A number of different therapies have originated in medicine that didn’t exist when Dr. Wun started practicing medicine which includes Targeted Therapy and Immunotherapy. Targeted Therapy is the process of understanding the biological pathways that cancers take to cause damage and drugs are then used to target these pathways. Immunotherapy, however, is the process of using a patient’s immune system to fight off cancer. Immunotherapy seems to be one of the big things in cancer right now, but it may soon be overtaken by Cellular Therapy which is manipulating human genes to allow the human body to fight cancer off on its own. Dr. Wun’s hope is that all three of these therapy types will be used to treat future cases of cancers in patients. Have Cancer survival rates increased since Dr. Wun started practicing medicine? The overall survival rates of people with cancer has been on the rise. Leukemia, for example, is becoming more of a chronic disease instead of a potential killer as it has been. Nowadays, even though leukemia is a still a types of cancer that can kill people, people with it are now expected to live for decades despite it. In the past, a child diagnosed with leukemia only had a 50% survival rate; now, their survival rate has risen to 90%. How has the cultural diversity of doctors changed in California over the years? The cultural diversity amongst doctors in California has gradually been changing. This has partially been the result of outreach programs, such as COMPADRE, that are encouraging minorities to learn medicine so that they can help fight medical diseases in their communities. Another thing to look at is the gender gap amongst doctors. Today, 60% of the doctors at UC Davis are women. How a person does in medical school will greatly affect how they do in their residency. Some schools will handout grades to their students while others will give out a simple “pass” or “fail.” The better a person does in medical school, the better off they will be when they apply for a competitive residency like orthopedic surgery. What also affects a person’s chance of getting into a good residency is also dependent on how well they do on two test: The USMLE, which is considered to be the SAT of medical school, and the MCAT. Why doing well on these tests is considered important is because if a person does well on these tests, they’ll do well on other types of tests in the future. What is a “Multiple Mini-Exam/Interview (MMI)?” This is essentially a role-play used by multiple schools, including UC Davis (UCD), to see how potential doctors do in a number of different medical scenarios. You are overseen by a “rater,” who may or may not be a medical personal, and they will determine how you do in each scenario. Why the MMI is considered important is because it is a better indicator of how well a person will perform as a doctor compared to the MCAT and similar test. How hard is it for someone to get into medical school at UC Davis? Dr. Wun indicated that it can be really difficult to get into medical school at UC Davis with only about 2.3-2.4% of applicants actually getting into the school. However, Dr. Wun also stated that a prospective medical school student still has a 40% chance of getting into a medical school if they apply to a good amount of schools. How does UCD accepts its applicants? UCD accepts its applicant be looking on a student’s prior school experience to see if they can keep up with a high course load. Two big indicators of this are GPA scores and the MCAT. This isn’t all, however; UCD also checks to see if a student has done volunteer work during their school career; not only does this indicate if a student can juggle multiple things at the same time, it also provides evidence that an applicant has the communal qualities that is essential to become an effective doctor. Something that UCD definitely looks out for is leadership experience and how Dr. Wun defined leadership experience is as how well a person has done interacting with other in group activities. How a person describes these experiences in an interview also makes a difference. For example, UCD are less interested in hearing about the specifics made in a certain project compared to what the applicant did when the mistake arose. As a researcher, how much time is put into patients as opposed to research It varies from doctor to doctor. There are some doctors that don’t even see patients; they act more like a PhD than an MD. However, there are other doctors that see patients on a regular basis. On average, however, a research doctor will spend 20-30% of their time seeing patients and will spend the rest of their time performing research. How does the resarch path verge from the typcial patient path. The research path typically takes more time than the average medical path and is more competitive. Dr. Wun hinted that some programs could take an additional nine years not counting the clinical stuff. What is the general advice would you give to general pre-med students? Dr. Wun advised the club members to get a holistic school experience. More specifically, he advised students to get acquainted in multiple fields of interest, that may or not be related to medicine, while spending more time getting experience in one of them. What is your average day like? An average day for Dr. Wun, as stated by him, is “very highly variable” with a typical week having 50-60 hour of it dedicated to work. Surgeons, however, spend 60-70 hours at work. - Zachari Shubin, Vice President of Records Dr. Abdul Hassan – October 11th, 2019
Who is Dr. Hassan? Dr. Abdul Hassan is a surgical resident from UC Davis currently in his second year in the surgical department. Dr. Hassan first obtained an interest in medicine in between the years of 2006 to 2008 when his mother nearly died of a mis-bowel injury. He was impressed about how much the surgeons stood by his mother during her operation and recovery and thought this a profession he could pursue. He attended UC Santa Cruz for his bachelor’s in microbial biology and eventually attended UC San Diego for medical school. His current trajectory is to get into general surgery, but he has also considered getting into pediatric surgery. How did Dr. Hassan get into medical school? Dr. Hassan didn’t have much direction on how to go through the medical school process. However, he did have a doctor who mentored him and helped him get to where he needed to be. Under Dr. Ian Brown, who Dr. Hassan is now working with as a resident, he learned how important good grades, volunteer work and medical experience was in order to get into medical school. After spending some time reading the internet together, Dr. Hassan obtained a better idea on how to best tackle his medical career. Though Dr. Hassan’s efforts to get into medical school have been mostly consistent, feels this wouldn’t have been the case if he hadn’t taken three years off in between getting his bachelor’s and taking the MCAT. When sharing this part of his journey to the club, he acknowledged that this wasn’t the traditional pathway in getting into medical school, but he shared that this time allowed him to get work experience, such as being an MCAT teacher, obtain money for medical school, and develop a strong emotional base for the stress that medical school would bring. Overall, he felt this break then prevented him from getting burnout while in medical school and suggested the club members to consider doing something similar. In his words, without a strong emotional base, he would have “lost himself” in medical school. Why did Dr. Hassan choose to attend UC Davis for his residency? Dr. Hassan noted that he had gone to UC San Diego for medical school, but he emphasized that he didn’t do it because of any prestige that the school had. He stated that he did that because he felt that was the best school for. He also explained that this was the reason why he didn’t stay at that school for his residency. He felt that UCSD didn’t have the residency program that would be the most useful to him, so he applied and got accepted into UC Davis where he felt he would grow the most. He told the club members that it was more important that they applied for schools that they felt would most grow them over getting into a school because of the name. What did Dr. Hassan say about getting into a residency program? The application for a residency occurs during the fourth year in medical school. Whether of not they are accepted into a program is put solely on the individual as they need letters of recommendation and a good resume to get accepted. When Dr. Hassan went through the application process, he applied to at least sixty programs so that he had an increase chance of being accepted into one program. In addition to that, he ranked the schools from the one he wanted to attend the most to the one he wanted to attend the least. The thing about this ranking system is that the schools also rank how bad they want certain students. If the rankings between the two entities match, a student gets in. Dr. Hassan also stated there were ten things that are important for getting into a residency, but in front of the club, he stated the three most important: test scores, letters of recommendation, and interviews. What was residency like for Dr. Hassan during his first year there? Dr. Hassan went over some of his experiences in his first year of residency. During their first year, interns are considered “interns” which essentially means they’re the grunts of the residency program. Whether or not a resident gets a lot of cases during this year depends on how assertive they are in getting them. The more assertive an intern is, the better off they are in the moment and in the long run. Dr. Hassan, who is in his second year of residency, is now considered a “junior” and is now being assigned cases more often. Which surgical programs are the most competitive? All surgery programs are very competitive, but the two most competitive are dermatology and emergency surgery. This is essentially because they work the least for the most pay. For example, an emergency surgeon may work as little as little as 10 hours a month and still easily make a million dollars in a month. Dr. Hassan, however, advised not to pursue these fields of surgery, or any field of surgery, unless they truly want to pursue that field. One reason was that, even though surgeons in these fields are payed rather highly, they typically miss the opportunity to establish a bond with a patient; something that Dr. Hassan personally considers important. How did Dr. Hassan prepare for the MCAT? When talking about his preparation for the MCAT, Dr. Hassan stated that, even though its very important, its still JUST a test; its an assessment of an individual’s critical thinking abilities and should only be a part of a lifelong process of learning and improving as a potential medical professional. He suggested that those wanting to go into the medical field should beginning preparing for the MCAT early. Theoretically, its an assessment of knowledge and skills obtained in classes spanning to an individual’s undergraduate career. Relearning everything from earlier college can take a long time and is a reason why it took Dr. Hassan three months to prepare. Any effective MCAT preparation should only be just going over books as reference material and use it as a guide to make sure everything is down. Dr. Hassan emphasized that the MCAT is not a test a person should cram for; they should be working a little bit each day to prepare and gradually take in the material. As he stated concerning the MCAT, and school in general, “It’s not a sprint; it’s a marathon” He also recommends annotating whatever preparation material is being used. He personally used the MCAT preparation book from Kaplan and personally found it very useful. Something that Dr. Hassan did to prepare was to memorize flash cards whenever he would have free time. More specifically, when had a free moment, he would use “Anki,” which is a flashcard app to gradually and thoughtfully take in the material. He also emphasized learning and knowing the concepts instead of trying to memorize a lot of stuff as well as understanding what’s truly important information and what is not. Something that Dr. Hassan did that helped with the exam was produce a mock booth that emulated the testing area. He felt Kaplan’s book was the best for him to prepare for the test, but he recommended to the club members that they get whatever books is easiest for them to read. He also thinks Exam Crackers has a pretty good book, too. What are some other things that Dr. Hassan did that he felt contributed to his success preparing for medical school? What Dr. Hassan considered a part of his success was if things in medicine didn’t work out, he would be okay. He also emphasized that the major that a person pursues, whether its in science or a different field of study, it not very important; what’s truly important is about whether the right prerequisites have been completed and if they were completed well. This lead him to state that, whatever a person chooses to study as an undergrad, it should be something that they truly find interesting. He’s stated that some of the people that he was in medical school with included math and English majors. What is Dr. Hassan’s average morning like as a resident? Dr. Hassan’s schedule as a resident depends on the day. His days would typically start at 5:30am where he would get together with his team and catch up on the day before. As a resident, surgical plans are typically planned out the week before. What other things did Dr. Hassan talk about concerning being a medical resident? Dr. Hassan informed the club members that, as a doctor, at some point in their career, at least one person will die because of them. He shared this to inform the club members that being a doctor can be tough. He went over the autonomy a person would getting their years going through rotations. During a person’s first year, they always have an attendee with them, but they obtain a lot more autonomy by their 3rd and 4th year. How did Dr. Hassan tackle his undergrad education? While going to school for his undergraduate degree, he made studying his priority. He saw studying less as preparing for the next exam and more of preparation for life down the road. He stated that, in order for someone to excel in college, a person needs to do a little bit for their classes each day. In addition, he stated that it’s important for students to establish a support system made up of family and friends for when times get hard and when a person begins to second guess their choice of going into the medical field. He also noted that its important for an individual to be kind to themselves when going through school. In addition, he stated that its important to have a little something, health-wise, that a person can look forward to each day to keep them anchored may it be working out, meditation, or something of the like. What is insurance like for someone in a residency program? Dr. Hassan shared that, as a resident, a person gets really good insurance just in case something happens. He also shared that surgeons are their own worst critics and need to become aware when and when not to perform something during an operation. If you would like to get in contact with Dr. Hassan for any questions or for advice, please contact one of the ARC AMSA officers. Zachari Shubin Vice President of Records |
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