In the summer between second and third year of medical school, I chose patient experience as my advanced elective. Our main assignment was to make a video demonstrating patient care at OSU. Our group of three medical students interviewed OSU staff, organized a meeting with patients and even tried our hand at acting to create this fun and informative final product! We explored the concept of diversity and how it’s utilized in hospitals (OSU as our example). Furthermore, we demonstrated some potential situations where diversity can become an important aspect of patient care such as when one’s culture utilizes alternative medicines. This project really helped me to see beyond the basic health care needs and routine history taking and physical exam techniques I had honed throughout medical school. I learned more about the necessity to learn more about alternative medicine, the importance of body language when speaking to patients as well as the importance of demonstrating autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. This elective helped me to delve deeper into the humanistic aspects of medicine and further confirmed my interest in becoming a great patient advocate throughout my career. In addition, this piqued my interest into exploring what else alternative medicine has to offer for patients.

My patient experience elective fulfilled the “interpersonal communication” competency by helping me to understand how human diversity can influence or interfere with the exchange of information. I understand that different cultures have varying perspectives on medicine and I must accommodate each patient accordingly.

As I practice medicine in the future I will develop my interpersonal communication by using interpreters and also learning more about different cultures. I am currently taking a course in medical Spanish, learning Italian and actively trying to improve my medical Korean to help my future patients!