Tag Archives: Medical Student Author

Alexandra Tee

This is a finalist in the 2016 STFM Student Blog Competition.

For my eighth grade graduation my aunt gave me a card that read, “It’s the journey, not the destination.” I loved it. I wrote it on other people’s cards. I think it was my senior year yearbook quotation. It made so much sense to me.  

Last year, as a bright-eyed second-year medical student chugging all the family medicine lemonade at the AAFP National Conference, I attended a session about caring for communities that argued, “It’s not the destination, or the journey. It’s the direction.”

All these years of journeying, and I was focused on the wrong cliché?

When I step back and think about direction, I notice a certain pattern: humans travel in circles. If anyone told 9-year-old me that there would be signs on the road warning, “Don’t Pokemon GO and Drive,” I would be ecstatic. But in 2016, the necessity of such signs stirs up a cocktail of disappointment, amusement, and irony. Turn on the news, scroll through the latest hashtags, or read the paper (if you know where to get one)—history still seems to repeat itself. Therefore, when prompted to answer where I see family medicine in 10 years, it made sense for me to look 10 years back. In 2006, an AAFP editorial written by Dr Sanford J. Brown, “Reinventing Family Medicine,” opens with, “Our specialty is ailing.”

After outlining the defining skill sets of family medicine: practice management, wellness medicine, information technology, home visits, family dynamics, and community medicine, Dr Brown concludes with:

“The fight for privileges to do procedures saps our energies and is one that we will eventually lose, not only because specialists are better trained to do them, but because in this day of consumer-driven health care, our patients will select the doctors with the most experience and best track records to do their colonoscopies, colposcopies, cardiac stress tests, C-sections, hernia repairs, and critical care. Perhaps no other specialty trains its residents to do so many things they will never use in practice, while spending so little time training them to do what most of them will wind up doing—clinic medicine.

To maintain the dynamism of our specialty, we must define ourselves by what we can do better than everyone else, not by what everyone else is doing.”1

I agree with Dr Brown in that we define ourselves by what we can do. Furthermore, I believe we must define ourselves by who we want to be for our patients. As family physicians we are advocates for our patients throughout their lives, through specialty visits, insurance changes, and health care reforms. We practice clinic medicine as active members in our communities. Contrary to Dr Brown, I believe that what everyone else is doing is extremely important to us. In the growing age of inter-professional health care teams, care coordination is becoming increasingly crucial in providing quality care for patients. As a future family physician, I want to voice my patient’s concerns and best interests in the medical jumble of specialties, insurance policies, and health care system red tape. I am inspired by family physicians involved in policy and practice model transformations, and I hope that more physicians-in-training recognize the role family medicine plays in the delivery of care. We assert ourselves in the processes that shape our patients’ experiences because we stick with patients from beginning to end. As patient advocates and community leaders, we must lead health care into a direction that improves health care for everyone.

Everything in my journey through medicine is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The MCAT was the hardest test I’d taken, that is, before USMLE Step 1. A full history and physical OSCE was the hardest thing I’d ever done, until I had to convince a veteran who had avoided hospitals for 40 years and lost 50 pounds in a matter of months that he needed to finish his GoLYTELY so we could tell him he had end stage colorectal cancer. Unlike many decisions in my medical journey, choosing family medicine was not hard. However, like all my previous hardest-things-ever-done, figuring out the direction of family medicine will be a challenge. What direction is family medicine heading towards?

I believe family medicine is directed towards becoming leaders for change. As physicians-in-training, we have worked countless hours and made too many sacrifices to work in a sick care system that we are not confident provides the best quality care for our patients. Family medicine physicians play the ultimate advocate for our patients, their families, and our communities. We listen to the struggles of patients fighting to overcome health care barriers. In order to empower our patients, we must engage in leadership roles and national discussions. By doing so, we will be able to create change in the systems that often fail our most vulnerable patient populations. Ten years from now, family physicians will continue to grow as agents of change, directing our health care system to provide comprehensive, cost-effective, patient-centered care. Knowing who family medicine physicians are for their patients and communities, I know I will choose the journey of family medicine in any direction. I still believe in the journey, and I am hopeful in the direction that family medicine is moving towards.

Reference

1. Brown S. Reinventing family medicine. Fam Pract Manage 2006 Apr;13(4):17-20.

This is a finalist in the 2016 STFM Student Blog Competition.

Pratiksha Yalakkishettar

It was the end of a rather long fall afternoon at the family medicine clinic where I worked as a scribe. Our last patient of the day, a cheerful, spunky, bubbly woman 80 years young had come in with her family—three sons, a daughter, and two younger sisters. She had been diagnosed with end stage lung cancer, and they had come in to discuss her goals of care and options moving forward. I had the honor and privilege to be privy to their conversation. As I sat there, typing up notes on their open, honest discourse with shaking hands, I filled with emotions. Their love and optimism to make the best out of the time that was left in as dignified a manner possible touched me deeply. During that visit and subsequent appointments, the whole family had welcomed me into their health care team, quite literally embracing me and encouraging me to learn about what it means to heal once they learned about my dream of becoming a physician.

“I don’t want to know how much longer I have,” our patient had said, “I feel good, I just want to spend time with the grandkids, watch hockey, and have a good time.” I remember that she had laughed about her funeral arrangements and how everyone in the family knew that she had dry cleaned and hung up her desired dress to be buried in, a bright red number that showed off her figure and loyal support of her favorite sports team. My doctor had later told me that this woman had been her patient since she had started practicing almost 20 years ago and that two of her sons and their families came to the same practice. I remember her subsequent visits where she was still just as cheerful, her clothing pristine and her hair always perfectly coifed.

This was just one of hundreds of experiences I had over my year as a scribe where patients trusted me and accepted me into their health care team. They provided me scaffolding for what quality patient care meant. The mother of four who brought in all her children to her baby’s checkups and I would try to distract her 3-year old daughter with coloring pages. The couple married for over 40 years who always came in together, arguing and commenting about the other’s health. The father who expressed concerns about his son’s depression after his granddaughter had passed away in an accident—all three generations had been patients at the clinic.

I want to challenge that while we will see many amazing changes as we progress further into the 21st century, the fundamentals of the field of family medicine will be preserved.

Ten years from now, family medicine will remain at the forefront of primary care.

The next decade may bring a technology revolution where the power of big data is brought into physicians’ hands through cell phone apps, and telemedicine increases access for all. Simultaneously, I predict that we will see the reclamation of the patient’s story: the narrative that tells us who we are treating and what is important to their quality of life when helping them navigate through their treatment plans.

The beauty of family medicine is in its name. While we might see innovation in the architecture of clinics, bringing together interprofessional teams in round-table offices working together seamlessly to take care of the whole patient, this change will be centered around maintaining the integrity of the patient-provider relationship. Family medicine. Even the name describes a relationship.

I think back now on my experience with the lady in red almost 2 years later, as a second-year student in medical school. I wonder how this patient’s story read. I wonder whether she was happy in the last moments of her life and whether the care she received helped her achieve her goals at the end of her life. I wish I could somehow convey to her how important she was to the trajectory of my life.

I hope that 10 years from now, I can be practicing medicine just like my mentor, the family medicine doctor—medicine that focused on healing, on listening, and on the knowledge that relationships and family are fundamental to the art of medicine. I hope to be helping my patients gain the skills to navigate the health care system and be empowered to communicate and pursue their health care goals. I hope to see beautiful births, dignified dying, and everything in between—something that is unique to family medicine alone.

Aleksandra Bacewicz

This is a finalist in the 2016 STFM Student Blog Competition.

Clickity click click clack. I smile to myself as I recall the days I was a medical student, like the one sitting next to me now. Monika’s eyes intently focused, she skims the electronic records for our patients. The names are all so familiar to her, because she has seen them often with the real-time data we receive from them. Gone are the days of visits that occur every few months; we “see” our patients all the time. The definition of quality care in family medicine—patient-centered, values and evidence-based, efficient—is still intact but has been chiseled to include new dimensions.

The consideration of time as a limiting factor has not lost its grip in health care. People are busy. They work varied schedules, sleep at odd hours, visit their grandchildren, water their plants, and drive to appointments. But with the ubiquity of health tracking applications, providers now have the ability to take a peek at an individual’s health status on a regular basis. Triage at the clinic receives some alarming information—Roger’s blood pressure has been through the roof the past few days. Hmm, did he forget to refill his meds? Do we need to finagle his medications and dosing to better manage his hypertension? Are there unaccounted for stressors affecting Roger’s changes? With the wave of data that is available at our fingertips, changes in health care have focused on transferring information from patients to providers in real-time. Medical personnel have an allotted amount of time to work through acute health issues as they arise, in the same way health centers leave open time slots for “day of” appointments.

With dedicated staff sorting through data from our patient pool, providers are kept abreast of issues that need urgent attention. Simultaneously, we are able to respect the immutable facts of life—patients, especially when ill, have a difficult time coming to clinic. They may feel weak, fatigued, or simply have no one to drive them to a last minute appointment. By connecting with patients via phone, email, or other online messaging, the dynamics of power have shifted. It was simply a fact during my medical schooling that patients came to me. They entered within the walls of a room that were not all that welcoming, a little cold and definitely not as cozy as their living rooms; simply put, they were on my turf. Some visits are held at the clinic, while other health discussions are based out of patients’ homes, where I call them at a mutually agreed-upon time. Patients are reassured that they can lean on me as a source of knowledge, while feeling the pulse of their own autonomy.

Moreover, people are often excited with the newest technology, allowing them to be in control of their health in ways that might have been scoffed at decades ago. Technology is readily available and cheap, and made even more affordable through tech and medical partnerships. Patients now have the ability to rely on gadgets to track their blood sugar or take their blood pressure without a second thought. The patient and providers are alerted if health parameters fall out of a certain range, but relatively hands-off tracking methods have provided the opportunity to spend precious time enjoying life, rather than fidgeting with thrice daily needle sticks. Incorporating mobile applications and high tech devices into family medicine has also turned the tide further toward preventive medicine. With patients receiving direct feedback regarding their health, they become finely tuned to understand the push and pull of their body’s homeostasis. Potentially burdensome health conditions can be caught early, as medical staff counsel patients on altering the course of disease progression.

The greatest shift in family medicine in the past decade has been taking advantage of the resources that abound. Technology may not be the panacea we yearn for, but it is an impactful tool to be used wisely and creatively. As medical providers, our ideas for improvement can sometimes get trapped within the walls of our clinics. But in order to continue engaging patients and molding quality medical care into the confines of daily living, we strive to keep up with the spirit of the times—or risk leaving health and wellness behind.