Saturday, September 19, 2020

"Questions from Milwaukee” Q & A with Reed Colling, MCW-Green Bay M4

 From the 9/18/2020 newsletter

Student Perspective


Life as an MCW Regional Campus Student


"Questions from Milwaukee” Q & A with Reed Colling, MCW-Green Bay M4



Associate Editor Olivia Davies (MCW-MKE M4) asks Reed Colling (MCW-GB M4) questions about what it’s like to be a student at one of MCW’s regional campuses.


Olivia: “Regional campus students have a different curriculum than MKE students. Refresh me on how that works, and what do you like better about it?

Reed: “The curriculum during the M1 and M2 year are actually identical. The main difference is earlier clinical exposure and less time for electives. On the Green Bay campus, we start our core clerkships during the summer after M1 year. While it is challenging to start clinic before learning all the pathophysiology presented in the M2 year, starting to develop our clinical skills early on is super helpful as we progress through our education. One downside is there are only six weeks available for electives. By graduation, the difference between the main campus and the regional campuses is actually only twenty weeks of instruction.”

Olivia: “I know you’re applying Emergency Medicine (EM) this year and decided to do a fourth year, what does that process look like at a regional campus? How is your fourth year different than an M4 student on the MKE campus?

Reed: “While the goal of the regional campus is to graduate as many students in three years as possible, the administration is very supportive of students pursuing whatever specialty fits them best! After you take USMLE Step 1, you submit an application requesting a fourth year outlining why it is necessary for your career path. In EM, you typically need to complete two EM rotations at a program with a residency which would not be possible during the accelerated curriculum. The application is then reviewed by both the MKE and regional campus. After a fourth year is approved, there is very little difference between an M4 student on the MKE campus and the regional campuses! We complete a mixture of rotations in MKE, on the regional campus, and away rotations.”

Olivia: “What’s one thing you wish Milwaukee students knew about being a student at a regional campus?

Reed: “I think there can be a misconception that because the training does not take place in an academic center that it is less rigorous. Having done rotations at both campuses, neither is more or less intense, just different!”

Olivia: “What’s it like to be a part of a LARGE class (>200) but have a cohort of ~30 students you know really well? What benefits have you experienced as a part of a smaller regional cohort?

Reed: “The smaller class size is one of my favorite things about being a student on the regional campus! The comradery that developed was really special and it wasn’t long until we were more like family than classmates. With a smaller group, it is easy to learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses so that we can all come together to succeed as a class.”

Olivia: “What challenges have you faced as a regional campus student?

Reed: “The biggest challenge being a student on the regional campus is time management. Because of the truncated timeline and accelerated curriculum, it is easy to get overwhelmed. For example, within an approximately six-month time frame we take USMLE Step 1, complete core clinical rotations, fill out and submit ERAS, enter interview season, and take USMLE Step 2 CS and CK. I’m tired just typing it!”

Olivia: “What’s your favorite thing about being in Green Bay?”
Reed: “The people. Everyone really goes above and beyond to make us feel welcome and like

we are an integral part of the community. The occasional free Packers ticket doesn’t hurt either!”


Reed Colling is a fourth year medical student at MCW-Green Bay applying to residency in emergency medicine. He is passionate about public health advocacy and improving diversity and inclusion in medicine.


May I Drink Coffee?

 Student Perspective 


Interviewing in the COVID-19 Era


May I Drink Coffee?


Olivia Davies – MCW-Milwaukee medical student Class of 2021



I’ve tried three different zoom set ups, four if you count the one from my couch that I joke about. One of my friends has a bouquet of flowers set stage left on her screen, just in sight. I play with the tilt of my monitor to see if I can show the top leaves of my split leaf philodendron which sits on the floor next to me. Staring at the white wall behind me through the screen monitor I catch a glisten – is that grease? I turn around to examine it in real time, yup, grease. How did that even get there? To be fair, I am sitting next to the wall where our dinner table was just a mere two days ago before I declared it my new interview spot.

“Do you have the Milk Street Cookbook?” my fiancé calls from the other room. I sigh, removing it from the stack underneath my laptop. I know I should be grateful he’s making the grocery list this week (like he does almost every week), but doesn’t he understand we only have so many laptop-sized books in this apartment to elevate the built-in camera? I realize using Milk Street as my laptop prop probably won’t be sustainable.

One of my friends asked if I was planning to wear heels ... I guess I hadn’t thought of that. She smiles matter-of-factly and says, “I am, they make me feel put together, even if no one will see them.” She has a point, I think. I stand up shimmying out of the screen to go look for my suit jacket. Finally unearthing it from my closet I gasp at how dated it looks, were flashy gold buttons “in” five years ago? This won’t play well on camera. I sit back down and start to look for a simple suit jacket online.

Reaching for my phone to text my friend back, I glimpse my half hunched over frame in the monitor. “I think I’ll wear heels, too,” I say, un-pretzel-ing my feet from beneath me and placing them firmly on the ground. Before setting down my phone, I fire off one more text, “Do you think it’s OK to drink coffee?”


Olivia Davies is a fourth-year medical student at MCW-Milwaukee who is in the midst of applying for her dermatology residency. She is an associate editor of the Transformational Times. Follow her at @oliviamtdavies.

Front Line Adjacent: A Reflection on being Removed from Clinical Rotations

 

From the 9/18/2020 newsletter


Student perspective


Front Line Adjacent: A Reflection on being Removed from Clinical Rotations


David Lambert - M.D. Candidate, Class of 2021



I was just over two weeks into my internal medicine clerkship when I first heard the news that medical students would be removed from rotations due to COVID-19. I was filled with a flood of emotions. I was sure by then that I wanted to go into internal medicine, so of course I was disappointed I would not be able to finish our rotation. But I was mostly sad to say goodbye to the team. In just two weeks, we had already experienced late nights, challenging call shifts and difficult cases. We had experienced a range of emotions together and formed a deep sense of trust that made them feel like more than just coworkers. These are the very elements that are important for providing quality care. These elements also made it very hard for me to say goodbye. I realized that a team that I had come to genuinely care about would be facing a global pandemic that we still knew very little about.

As our rotations moved online, my days were filled with uncertainty. Each day, we would receive updates from the school and hospitals. Everyone was trying to react, to do the right thing, and to ease our anxiety. Third-year medical students are used to adapting to changing environments-we are never in the same rotation for more than four weeks. However, moving online felt profoundly different. In some ways, I felt like an imposter-not knowing when we would see another patient made me feel like I was just pretending to be a medical student. I had become accustomed to finding ways to be helpful in my rotations and seeking every possible opportunity to learn how to be a good physician. However, now as I sat at home with my laptop in front of me watching the coronavirus numbers rise, I felt helpless. I was fearful for the world, our nation, and my colleagues in the hospitals.

As our country went on lockdown, I watched as COVID-19 cases and deaths rose. I also watched as personal protective equipment became scarce, as unemployment rates rose, and as people began to fear losing their homes or becoming evicted. In some ways, I was fortunate as a medical student. Although my education looked different, I did not need to worry about feeding a family or finding a new job. A break in my education meant my anxieties centered around whether I’d be prepared for residency, whether I was falling behind my peers, or whether I would graduate on time. However, this felt selfish compared to the experiences others in our country were facing. When we commit to medical school, we commit to the very principles that guide physicians to do right by their patients and their profession. I felt a deep sense of guilt in not being able to do anything meaningful to help my team or fight the pandemic.

After nearly three months of not seeing a real patient, I was so excited to round on my first day back. It has been incredibly special to be able to continue to see patients and be a part of the teams that lift each other up again. I feel lucky to be going into the field of medicine and this pandemic has made me prouder than ever to be working alongside the dedicated and passionate people that continue to care for patients. I am also grateful to the dedicated staff at the Medical College of Wisconsin who worked incredibly hard to help us rapidly shift our rotations and courses completely online, all while working from home and managing their own personal and family challenges. Faculty made me feel like my education was a priority, even when this was not easy to achieve. I am proud to be part of the MCW community.

The future of our profession must find their voices

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From the 9/18/2020 newsletter


The future of our profession must find their voices


Adina Kalet, MD, MPH


Dr. Kalet celebrates the 25th and first student edited issue of the Transformational Times and argues for the critical importance of strengthening student voices in the transformation of medical education. 



“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
Joan Didion



COVID-19 and the events of the last 6 months has provided us all with a classic disorienting dilemma. According to Mezirow’s transformative learning theory, disorienting dilemmas occur when people have experiences that do not fit their expectations and that they cannot resolve without changing their world views and challenging basic underlying assumptions and beliefs. This perspective transformation is not a common event, but when it does happen, theory has it, profound learning occurs. A strong professional identity is facilitated by these uncomfortable or distressing experiences when coupled with an ability to reflect on what one has learned- usually in writing- and expert support from coaches, mentors, faculty, peers, or others (Kegan & Lahey, 2009).

There is a great deal of evidence that cultivating an ability to write reflectively, expressively and stylistically well is critical to “locking in” learning experiences for the long run- especially if those experiences are emotionally intense. But good reflective writing requires effortful practice. Even for those who do it for a living and find it pleasurable, good writing is never easy. In these very stressful times- given the potential for transformative learning- I believe we should encourage our trainees to cultivate a habit of reflective writing.

These early years of their professional lives in health care will shape them as individuals and as a generation. This current crisis is not over and there are more crises ahead. Hearing from, listening to and engaging with our junior colleagues will be vital to ensure a physician workforce not only ready to serve with expertise, character and passion, but also that as individuals they will be hardy enough to learn from crisis.


Here are my considerations and wonderings for our students in these tumultuous times:

  • How will this moment in history imprint on them? What will it mean that they entered our profession during a respiratory virus pandemic, a time of unprecedented political polarization, inescapable consequences of racism, and looming climate disasters?
  • What are they learning about the role of physicians in society? How do they imagine their own futures? Are they becoming braver and or more fearful in the face of these challenges? Do they hear and trust their inner voices? Do they perceive their own moral compasses? How do they discern which role models to emulate and which to ignore? 
  • How will this moment in history imprint on them? What will it mean that they entered our profession during a respiratory virus pandemic, a time of unprecedented political polarization, inescapable consequences of racism, and looming climate disasters?


In this, our 25th issue of the Transformational Times, hopefully the first of many student-led issues, we highlight stories of profound learning. We now have five students on the editorial board - Olivia Davies, Scott Lamm, Eileen Peterson, Sarah Torres, & Anna Visser - who have worked to bring forth a range of student voices. 

  • Kelli Cole & Gopika SenthilKumar describe how their plans for their TI2 and summer projects rapidly evolved -because they courageously and adventurously allowed them to- toward a cutting edge, mentored experience in design for healthcare. 
  • Jess Sachs shares her inner struggles and “true north” sources of inspiration as she navigates the extreme discomfort of trying to do right thing as a White woman in the face of racism. 
  • Reed Colling describes his experience as an MCW student on the Green Bay campus and Hayden Swartz, from the Central Wisconsin campus shares a beautiful, deceptively simple poem. 
  • David Lambert (a Milwaukee M4) describes the uncertainty of being pulled from the wards in March and the exhilaration of returning in June. 
  • Olivia Davies ponders the particulars (heels? coffee?) of her upcoming momentous professional transition from medical student to Dermatology resident in a two-dimensional, waist up virtual world. 

With courage, effort and beauty our students share their thinking with us.

Students who view themselves as subjects of oppressive educational structures will not find the joy in the medical profession. In a transformed world of medical education students are active partners in and co-creators of their own education. To do this we must all hone our thinking and ability to communicate. Writing does just this, the act of writing makes things happen, inspires others, clarifies facts and encourages healthy mind-expanding transformational learning.


Adina Kalet, MD MPH is the Director of the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Institute for the Transformation of Medical Education and holder of the Stephen and Shelagh Roell Endowed Chair at the Medical College of Wisconsin.



Ref: Kegan, R., Kegan, L. L. L. R., & Lahey, L. L. (2009). Immunity to change: How to overcome it and unlock potential in yourself and your organization, Harvard Business Press.