Artifact: Charleston, WV RAM Trip

From June 3-5, I had the opportunity to go on my second RAM trip to Charleston, West Virginia where I was able to experience new sides of the clinic as a runner on the dental floor and as a member of the team making eye glasses. While working as a runner on the first day, I was tasked with retrieving the tools necessary for dental procedures and for helping to direct patients to their appointments and to check-out. Since this clinic is still fairly new, many of the patients I spoke to had never been to a RAM clinic before. However, all of them were pleased with their experience and stated that they would love to come back in the future. One of the most memorable patients was a woman who brought her 10-year-old daughter to her dental appointment. The young girl was not able to be in the dental dent while her mom was being served, so she anxiously sat outside. Two of my fellow RAM members and I went over to where she was sitting and began to talk to her. She quickly started to open up and excitedly told us about her two cats and her favorite cartoons. She eventually started to ask us questions about the clinic and what we were doing in school. While showing her around the dental tool table, I told her about my goal to become a physician and my desire to help people. She immediately took interest and asked rapid fire questions about what doctors do. I answered her many questions as quickly as I could, and by the end, she was convinced that she too would be a doctor. When her mom was finished with her dental procedure, she ran to her and told her about her newfound friends and passion. Her mom looked so relieved that her daughter felt more comfortable in the clinic than when they first arrived, and she thanked all three of us for taking care of her child. The next day at the clinic, she ran into one of our RAM chapter members and told him about how her daughter’s excitement lasted the whole day after they left. It was an incredibly fulfilling experience to have made a strong impact in the life of a child, and it’s the kind of comfort that I wish to provide as a physician in the future.

Work Experience: Patient Care Technician

Pictured above: Caroline holding a baby kangaroo a patient brought to their appointment.

 

Over the course of the summer, I had the opportunity to work a full-time job as a Patient Care Technician (PCT) at an orthopedic office in Dayton. Although I have had previous clinical experience at clinics hosted by RAM, my role as a PCT provided the most hands-on interactions I have had to date. While my exact tasks varied slightly from day to day depending on the provider I was working with and what types of appointments were scheduled, my days always consisted of the following: cleaning and restocking patient rooms at the beginning and end of clinic, rooming patients, documenting patient answers to intake questions, collecting vitals, and relaying any patient concerns to their provider. On an as needed basis, I was responsible for removing ER splint casts, plaster casts, sutures, and surgical staples. Additionally, I cleaned surgery trays and kits for suture or staple removal.

Being in a clinical role with such close proximity to physicians allowed me to get a strong sense of what it is like to be a doctor on a daily basis. I developed an understanding of how it is best to schedule patients in order to prioritize more urgent cases. For example, a first week post-op appointment should not be pushed back at all, but a 2 month recheck appointment can usually wait a few extra weeks if necessary. I also had the opportunity to see the progression of diagnoses. One patient came in for a carpal tunnel suture removal and complained of redness and warmth around a round dark spot. It appeared as though a suture remained undissolved; however, after inspecting it, I noticed that skin had grown over the dark spot and there were no visible suture ties. I called the PA in to examine in and she recognized that the suture was likely still in the process of dissolving and that the dark spot was just blood pooling in the wrist from the other dissolved sutures. The redness and warmth was also explained by this and not indicative of an infection. In another case, I was watching a surgeon perform a trigger finger release surgery. The procedure progressed as expected, but when the surgeon asked the patient to open and close her hand, she noticed that the tendon was slipping off of the knuckle. Although the trigger finger was resolved, this new problem required her to bandage the finger in a more supportive way in hopes of the tendon healing itself before surgery could be considered. Both cases demonstrated the need to be receptive to new patient information and to treat all ailments accordingly.

My favorite aspect of my job by far was the patient interactions that I had. I learned a lot about how to navigate patients’ emotions in a kind and professional way, as everyone who comes to the office is experiencing pain that often affects their quality of life. One patient came in from the ER with a fracture in her forearm and was visibly upset. Halfway through the intake questions, she began to cry and admitted that she was really frustrated with her injury and that she felt treatment would be helpless for her. I handed her a tissue and explained to her what the process of recovery would likely look like. She told me that she was really grateful for the outline I gave her and that she feels like she has been left in the dark for many of her other doctor’s appointments. By the time I left the room, she had calmed down and felt ready for her appointment to move forward. It was incredibly rewarding for me to feel like I was able to make a difference for someone under a lot of stress and it confirmed for me that I have the ability to handle patients in distress. One of the more challenging aspects of patient interaction is evaluating how likely it is that a patient is misusing opioids. Some of the potential indicators that I noticed were when a patient is repeatedly asking the same questions despite not having any diagnosed cognitive deficits and rapid or slurred speech. However, the process of determining whether or not someone is using prescriptions inappropriately is much more complex, and I still do not have enough experience to make that judgement. It is my goal to learn more about how doctor’s go about handling these situations while still respecting the dignity of the patient. When I return to this orthopedic office over winter break, I plan to learn more about how to handle situations where drug abuse is suspect, how doctor’s go about ruling out other conditions, and I plan to shadow surgeons in the OR.

 

 

Second Year Vision Statement

Over the course of the next two years, I plan to remain involved in Ignite and to expand our membership base. I want to make the club more accessible and to inspire more people to be interested in politics, especially as it pertains to combating misogyny. I want to use this connection to be more in tune with the needs of the local Columbus community and to extend my support to programs and political campaigns that will benefit the most marginalized people. I plan to join a research lab, volunteer in more clinical settings, and shadow physicians with master’s degrees in public health as I am considering pursuing an MPH in addition to attending medical school. I am going to work on connecting to more professors so I can build relationships with people who can write strong letters of recommendation. Most importantly, I plan to be more open to new possibilities and new lessons as I complete the second half of my undergraduate career.

AU21 and SP22 Year in Review

Given how unusual my first year of college was, I was determined to make my second year more impactful and to obtain all of the experiences I felt I missed out on my freshman year. The addition of more in-person classes and club events made this more attainable, and I took advantage of both as much as possible. I joined a new club called Ignite OSU, which is a club that works to consolidate political power against gender inequality and empower all people, women especially, to be more active in politics. I have always felt that it is important to be politically active, and joining this club gave me an outlet to voice my opinions and connect with others. Being a pre-med in a STEM major results in a lot of my academic life and extracurriculars revolving around science and healthcare fields almost exclusively, so Ignite provided a great opportunity to branch out and connect with people from other majors. I got the opportunity to learn about how political science and public relations majors would approach solving societal problems and I was also able to incorporate more STEM related concerns. This exchange of ideas culminated in a joint event I co-organized with ACMW OSU where we hosted a discussion event covering what types of biases women face in STEM and how to combat them. I had never planned a large event on campus before, and having the opportunity to do so taught me a lot about how to reach out to others about my ideas and to compromise with others so that the needs of everyone are met.

Another organization that I joined was the Community Host Group (CHG) council of the Remote Area Medical (RAM) OSU chapter. The goal of the CHG is to plan and host a free healthcare clinic in Columbus during the summer and I was tasked with reaching out to locations where we could potentially host the event. All of the sites I reached out to said that they were unable to host, if they responded at all. It was disheartening to receive negative feedback, but these setbacks really challenged me to be more creative in finding solutions and brainstorming with the rest of the CHG helped me refine these skills. Collaboration was a large theme of my fall semester, and it was essential for my success in all of my classes, chemistry 2510 especially. The course load and difficulty of the subject made learning the material challenging, but having other people in the class that I could study with and rely on to hold me accountable for keeping up with the lessons made the experience much more manageable. There is no way that I could have completed the course without their support, and I have realized how essential it is to ask for help from others and to share my struggles with people that I trust to keep my mental health in check.

In the spring semester, I took these lessons and continued to apply them. I found study groups for all of my classes and talked about what I wanted to achieve so I could have tangible support. Their support kept me motivated and I was able to identify weak spots where I needed to improve in my studying more quickly. I was also accepted into the professional medical fraternity Phi Delta Epsilon and I have begun to find an even larger community of support. I have not had a lot of opportunities to talk to upperclassmen about the pre-med journey, and having the ability to connect with experienced people has meant a lot to me, and I am looking forward to building my support system even more in the future. Additionally, I was elected the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and Membership Chair of Ignite which is a responsibility that has taught me so much about engaging with students on campus as I have had to work on finding ways to make club events more applicable to the average OSU student. Furthermore, working with the rest of the executive board has been an incredible experience so far because I have never been a part of a group that values and respects mental health so much. The willingness of everyone to be open about when we need more support and to extend help without judgement has benefitted me a lot and this experience has reshaped my view of how respecting others’ mental health needs can be addressed in academic environments. Overall, my second year has taught me so much about reaching out to others and learning to take initiative on projects I want to complete, no matter how challenging it may seem. I am incredibly grateful for the new people in my life, and I am excited to build upon this foundation in the future.

Chemistry 2510: A Review

During the fall 2021 semester, I took my first organic chemistry class, CHEM 2510, with Dr. Baldwin. My only expectation for the class was that it would be very challenging, and it was. The earliest content included acid-base chemistry, naming organic compounds, and resonance, topics that are now straightforward to me, but at the time they were difficult to get a grasp on. This was different than my previous chemistry experience – general chemistry felt very surface level while organic chemistry was able to explain the reasons for why atoms react the way that they do. The hybridization and resonance chapters made this the most apparent for me as they explained where electrons are physically located in space for resonance to occur and where the most reactive atoms on a compound are. The most difficult part of the semester was around the half-way point when we began to learn about the Big Four reactions: Sn1, Sn2, E1, and E2. This was the first time I had learned about reactions with mechanisms, and the little details of what reagents to use when were hard to keep track of at first – everything seemed to blend together. It was at this point in the semester that it became incredibly apparent how essential having a group of people to study with is, especially in organic chemistry. Thankfully, my roommates and I had all been studying together since the beginning of the course, and the Big Four reactions taught us how to refine our studying skills. Our group studying habits paid off by the time we reached chapters 12 and 13 as there are around a dozen new reactions for alkenes and alkynes each. Although we were more prepared to handle new information, there was still a learning curve. Understanding the reactions requires a lot of conceptual understanding as well, and being able to differentiate between Markovnikov and anti-Markovnikov reactions, syn and anti addition was challenging at first. Overall, I was able to do well and ended the semester with an A-. Since I am currently in Chemistry 2520 for the spring 2022 semester and I have completed both lab sections, I will no longer have to complete any organic chemistry courses. I will still need to take biochemistry in the fall, and I hope to take all of the foundational principles with me and to still understand how and why reactions work, even within a biological context. Most importantly, I intend to retain my studying skills that I acquired over the course of the semester by finding a group of people to collaborate with and by reading the relevant textbook chapters before class.

Artifact: RAM Trip

As a part of my commitment to service and engaging with local communities, I joined Remote Area Medical’s (RAM) OSU chapter on a clinic trip to Ashtabula, Ohio from April 1-3. RAM is a nationwide organization that hosts free clinics in underserved areas and does not require proof of insurance for treatment. Their mission of making healthcare accessible for all people resonates with me as I believe that access to health services needs to be improved, and participating directly in the administration of these services was a very rewarding experience. Waking up at 4 a.m. and working for 10 hours each clinic day is certainly hard on the body, but being able to see the tangible impact of my service on others made it more than worthwhile.

Since this was my first clinic, I was assigned to a position few were eager to take on – the biohazard cleanup team, commonly referred to as “blood buckets”, or more affectionately, the “purple people” in reference to our purple PPE. Our role was to clean out the dentists’ suction tools, empty the attached container for saliva and blood, and disinfect the individual dental tent while properly disposing of the waste we collected throughout the process. In anticipation of the trip, I was most looking forward to connecting with patients directly, but due to the nature of my role in biohazard disposal, that was not possible. However, I quickly gained an appreciation for the work that I was doing because without blood buckets, there are no dental services. Procedure rooms have to be disinfected somehow, and if this is not done, none of the work can move forward. This fact does not go unnoticed by the healthcare providers, and one dental assistant was kind enough to express how grateful she was for my involvement. She reminded me that every bit of effort counts for something, and that the people who are served by the clinic are deeply thankful for every person who helps facilitate it. Having this experience has shown me that there is more than one way to serve people, even if it does not feel very direct. Being in a more “behind the scenes” position is just as valuable as any other position – all that matters is working towards a collective goal.

Year in Review

Autumn 2020 Semester in Review

While it comes as no surprise, this semester is certainly not what I expected it to be. Covid has created many restrictions on in-person events, but that has not stopped me from working to find my place on campus and working hard academically. General chemistry has proved to be a challenge at times, but I have learned how to better ask questions to help me understand the material and I have become more comfortable with attending office hours. Although I am still a little nervous for my next semester of chemistry, I know that I have improved as a student and that I will be able to handle whatever is in store for me.

G.O.A.L.S.

The Honors and Scholars program at Ohio State has five main areas of focus that students are encouraged to explore and excel in. These G.O.A.L.S. are as follows:

  • Global Awareness: Students cultivate and develop their appreciation for diversity and each individual’s unique differences. While at Ohio State, I plan on engaging with people from all backgrounds and immersing myself in the unique insights they have to offer. I would love to have the opportunity to study abroad the summer after sophomore year and familiarize myself with a culture that is different from my own. While I am here in Ohio, I plan to continue educating myself about the experiences of POC by attending panel events where I have the opportunity to listen and ask questions.
  • Original Inquiry: Honors & Scholars students understand the research process by engaging in experiences ranging from in-class scholarly endeavors to creative inquiry projects to independent experiences with top researchers across campus and in the global community. I plan to be involved in research on campus at the start of my sophomore year and I am interested in working on projects involving the study of Alzheimer’s disease or autism spectrum disorder. In the future, I would like to design research projects of my own and put forth new ideas into the world.
  • Academic Enrichment: Honors & Scholars students pursue academic excellence through rigorous curricular experiences beyond the university norm both in and out of the classroom. I have gotten off to a strong academic start for the year and I plan on continuing to do so for the next semester and beyond. In the semesters to come, I plan to put the knowledge I have gained to use by working as a tutor for a psychology class I took this semester.
  • Leadership Development: Honors & Scholars students develop leadership skills that can be demonstrated in the classroom, in the community, in their co-curricular activities, and in their future roles in society. While I currently do not have leadership positions in the clubs I am currently involved in, I plan to be an active participant so I can prepare myself to handle leadership positions in the future.
  • Service Engagement: Honors & Scholars students commit to service to the community.

Artifacts

Shown above is a flyer for an event that my friends and I organized for my hometown over the summer. Titled Building a Bridge: A Rally for Racial Equality, we planned this community event in response to the protests surrounding police brutality and the wrongful death of George Floyd. All of us were moved by the outcry that we saw across the country and felt that we had a responsibility to step up and enact change where we could. My hometown is mostly populated by older white families who may not have in depth understanding of the challenges modern racism presents to POC and I wanted to help change that by providing basic insight to get conversations about antiracism started. My principle role in this event was to create pamphlets containing information explaining police brutality, the core messages of the Black Lives Matter Movement, and resources on how to better understand racism in America.

The rally was incredibly successful and it was moving to hear the testimonies of people in my community about their experiences with racism and how they believe we can all do better. The attendees were very receptive to the messages of unity and greater action in response to racism, and I believe that everyone who was a part of this event made a difference. After the rally, the mayor announced that she was going to create a city task force that analyzes race relations and consists of Black members of the community. This event helped me grow substantially in my understanding of racism in the United States and it has illuminated the fact that change is possible and I have the ability to create it. Moving forward, I plan on continuing this involvement and maintaining an active role in the issues that are important to me.