A diverse group of Vanderbilt residents, fellows and medical students shared why and how they chose to become physicians with more than 200 high school students at four Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) in the spring.<\/p>\n
The outreach event, sponsored by the House Staff Diversity and Inclusion Alliance (HSDIA) and the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Social Mission Committee, took place at Nashville\u2019s Maplewood, Cane Ridge, Glencliff and Overton High Schools.<\/p>\n
About 30 house staff and medical students participated.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to find ways we could impact the Vanderbilt community, within the Medical Center, but also ways we could engage with the community. Our plan was to improve visibility of the medical profession within Metro Nashville Public Schools and find ways to build connections with students with hopes of increasing their interest in pursuing medicine in the future,\u201d said Brandon Esianor, MD, a resident in the Department of Otolaryngology\/Head and Neck Surgery.<\/p>\n
MNPS, with its large number of students, was ideal for the outreach event, Esianor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt that targeting students early in the process, we could make some sort of impact in letting them know \u2018Hey look, regardless of where you come from, regardless of your backstory, you can be a doctor, and we\u2019re here to show you that and be your champions and cheerleaders. We\u2019re here to motivate you, to show you this is a possibility for you one day in the future.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Hassan Fakhoury, a third-year medical student, was instrumental in planning the program.<\/p>\n
He said the event was initially supposed to be just the residents, fellows and medical students telling their stories, but feedback from MNPS indicated the students wanted a more hands-on event.<\/p>\n
So, it evolved into two sessions \u2014 the first, with hands-on activities like suturing, tying knots, and interaction with a 3D anatomy model \u2014 and the second, an educational presentation featuring information about medical conditions of a celebrity that are public knowledge from a popular documentary familiar to most of the teenagers.<\/p>\n
Volunteers at each site briefly shared their unique \u201cjourney to medicine\u201d stories as a means to motivate the students, followed by a question-and-answer session to conclude the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was shocked by the inquisitive questions they were asking. They were beyond the high school level,\u201d Esianor said.<\/p>\n
The feedback from both groups has been positive and affirming, the organizers said. There are plans to expand the event next year since they were only able to visit four high schools, but had interest from 12.<\/p>\n
The event was made possible by the support of Vanderbilt University Medical Center\u2019s Office of Graduate Medical Education and the KLS Martin Group, a medical device company that donated eight skulls that students were able to keep at the conclusion of the event, and 3D figures for demonstrations supplied by Cameron Henry, a fourth-year radiology resident.<\/p>\n
Fakhoury received a message afterward that one of the Maplewood students at the presentation decided that day to become a family medicine doctor and serve his community because he was motivated by the program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what this event is all about \u2014 if you impact just one person, the number of people they\u2019re going to go off and impact is endless,\u201d Esianor said. \u201cIt makes spending two hours engaging with these students so worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vanderbilt group also benefited.<\/p>\n
\u201cMedical training is extremely rigorous,\u201d Esianor said. \u201cIt\u2019s filled with lots of highs and some lows, unfortunately, but being able to go out and meet with these students and have an impact in a way that\u2019s not necessarily part of our daily routine is refreshing for those of us who participated in the event. We got a lot of fulfillment out of being able to have a positive impact on this community of students.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A diverse group of Vanderbilt residents, fellows and medical students shared why and how they chose to become physicians with more than 200 high school students at four Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) in the spring. The outreach event, sponsored by the House Staff Diversity and Inclusion Alliance (HSDIA) and the Vanderbilt University School of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[45,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-fall-2022","category-vm-related-content"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-Vv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3565"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4189,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3565\/revisions\/4189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}