Scholarships and Medical Education | Minnesota Medical Foundation

Urban engagement

2013-04-29T19:54:57Z

MetroPAP immerses students in inner-city medicine, where relationship-building is lesson No. 1

By Susan Maas

Brian Park, a third-year medical student at the time, had seen the patient, a morbidly obese woman with COPD and recurrent pneumonia, for three months. But he didn’t have the context he needed to understand her health struggles — until he saw her home, a very small house where she lived with at least three generations of her family, as well as several friends who tended to come and go.

“There’s something really intimate about inviting someone into your home. We looked in her fridge, and it became clear why her BMI was so high,” says Park. “Why does she keep coming in? Why isn’t she taking all of her medications? That kind of learning doesn’t really come in one week or two weeks or four weeks,” he says.

Park’s participation in MetroPAP, an innovative University of Minnesota program that trains medical students to work in urban, medically underserved communities for nine months, allowed him to get to know his patient well, gain her trust, and discover the insights he needed to understand her health challenges.

MetroPAP — short for Metropolitan Physician Associate Program — is now in its third year and is the only program of its kind in the nation.

Proven approach, new setting

The program was inspired by the U’s internationally renowned Rural Physician Associate Program (RPAP). Launched in 1971, RPAP places third-year medical students in rural communities for nine-month rotations. So far, it has helped train more than 1,300 aspiring physicians to practice primary care in rural areas.

But Kathleen Brooks, M.D., M.B.A., M.P.A., director of RPAP, was concerned by the dearth of primary care doctors in urban communities, too.

“We thought, ‘wouldn’t it be interesting to take this educational model and apply it to urban underserved settings?’” says Brooks. “What would that look like?” So in 2008, then-Medical School dean Deborah Powell, M.D., challenged her to design a pilot program to find out.

Brooks — along with MetroPAP cofounders Michael Wootten, M.D., and Shailendra Prasad, M.D., M.P.H. — sought ideas from other institutions around the world.

Finding nothing like what they had in mind, they followed the RPAP model to create MetroPAP, starting small, with just two participants each year (next year it will have three, compared with 40 for RPAP). The two programs have the same core requirements for clerkships and the same basic requirements in terms of final exams, explains Brooks, who now directs both MetroPAP and RPAP.

As with RPAP, interested students apply to MetroPAP in the winter of their second year of medical school. “It tends to be students who really have a passion for underserved medicine and students who are really interested in primary care,” Brooks says.

Current MetroPAP student Vanessa Ozomaro says she’s thrilled — and undaunted — by the chance to help shape a one-of-a-kind work in progress. This winter she participated in a new six-week psychiatry rotation that joins surgery, emergency medicine, family medicine, and a two-part elective at Broadway Family Medicine Clinic in North Minneapolis and north Memorial Medical Center in nearby Robbinsdale.

A rich way to learn

MetroPAP students genuinely want to get to know their patients and mentors. “Students see it as an educational opportunity to have continuity with patients and preceptors and the health care team over nine months,” says Brooks. “I think it’s appealing, just intuitively, as a rich way to learn clinical medicine.”

While RPAP often tends to attract students from rural areas, MetroPAP has drawn students from both urban and suburban areas. Park, for example, is from the northern Twin Cities suburb of Shoreview. Ozomaro, the daughter of a nurse who is a Nigerian immigrant, grew up in St. Paul and says her urban high school had “a very diverse” environment.

“A lot of my friends had immigrant backgrounds, east African or Hmong, and we often had conversations about their experiences with the health care system,” Ozomaro says. That upbringing convinced her that it’s important for patients to be comfortable with and able to communicate with their physicians.

“I never had an African, or an African American, physician see me. I always felt like there were a lot of people who didn’t look like me, in medical [settings] and in the sciences generally.”

MetroPAP students share a deep commitment to social justice and to developing the humanistic side of medicine, says Prasad, assistant professor of family medicine. “RPAP has shown us a different way. In medical school, you get to a point where you start looking at things in a very reductionist way: You look at the heart. You look at the lungs. Here, the focus is on the context of the patient and the family and the community — the big picture.”

There’s also ample opportunity to develop procedural skills. “Objectively, in terms of clinical competency, this program is great, too,” says Park, who is taking a break from medical school to earn his master’s degree in public health. “I was able to do a lot more procedures — knee injections, circumcisions, things that come with a bit of liability. They treat you more like an intern.”

That’s by design, Prasad says. “You are treated like part of the family.

“[MetroPAP] students participate in our research meetings. We call it the percolator; they come and sit with us in the percolator and bring their ideas. And they’re part of our noncurricular activities, too — going to a baseball game, being part of our book club. We don’t force them to. It’s just natural.”

MetroPAP’s future is now

MetroPAP is built around mentorship, adds Prasad. The eager support of faculty preceptors and residents is essential. “When you look at why medical students choose disciplines, one common predictor usually is strong mentorship, strong role models. we tend to shape ourselves after folks we admire.”

Park, for one, plans to keep the trend going. “Developing strong relationships with mentors in MetroPAP gives me a framework for how I want to be a mentor to future [physicians],” he says.

“Any idea I had, they told me to run with it. I want to be involved in medical education and to help shape what it looks like.”

For now, say Brooks and Prasad, among the biggest challenges facing MetroPAP is figuring out how to expand it and make it replicable for other institutions.

“Is this an educational model we can expand, and if so, to what degree?” Brooks asks. The program’s capacity was initially limited both by design (“It’s easier to course-correct if you only have a couple of students,” she says) and by the availability of community sites. The faculty is working with the Central Avenue Neighborhood Health Source Consortium to find more participating clinics.

The time is right for MetroPAP, says Prasad: “I feel a synergy there.”

Participating faculty and students say MetroPAP reflects, as Brooks puts it, “a changing overall perspective on medical education.”

“We’re slowly doing away with the thinking that empirical knowledge is paramount to everything else,” says Park. “Scientific competency is just one tool in the toolbox. It’s about a bigger process: How do I go about building relationships in my community?”

Gradually, attentively, one patient at a time.

Susan Maas is a freelance writer who lives in Minneapolis.

To make a gift to support medical education at the University of Minnesota, visit www.give.umn.edu/giveto/meded.

Web extras

Video

Learn more about Vanessa Ozomaro’s community health project.

Community impact

A crucial component of MetroPAP is the chance to do a community health assessment, a project built around identifying and solving a problem or meeting a need in the community the student is serving. It’s not merely an academic exercise, says Shailendra Prasad, M.D., M.P.H., program cofounder and assistant professor of family medicine and community health. Students are expected to look, listen, and work with the community to make meaningful change.

Prasad points to one project that led to a lasting connection between Broadway Family Medicine Clinic in North Minneapolis and The Bridge for Youth, a resource and advocacy organization serving homeless teens.

MetroPAP student Vanessa Ozomaro lights up when she describes her idea: She’s meeting with representatives of local anti-human-trafficking organizations to connect women in prostitution, and those trying to transition out of it, with accessible health care.

“I want to identify barriers to their receiving health care, reasons why they may come to the clinic, and the type of interactions they may have had with physicians in the past,” Ozomaro says. “I want to really find out what their needs are.”

Watch a video of Vanessa and learn more about her community health project.

Building bonds

MetroPAP brings medical students and patients together in a way that traditional rotations can’t, says Ben Pederson, one of two students who blazed the MetroPAP trail in its inaugural year, 2010-11.

He tells this story to prove his point:

“I met this 60-year-old woman who would come in for stress reduction and body work; she’d been coming to Broadway [Family Medicine Clinic in North Minneapolis] for many years. I saw her at a couple different sessions, and we really got along.

“Well, she found a breast lump. I was able to go to that [diagnostic] visit and, later, to go when she was referred to the breast cancer clinic at North Memorial. She had a tumor that needed to be operated on. It’s a devastating diagnosis for anyone, but she had a very limited support network. I was able to be there with her. Every pre-op visit she had, I was there. We were able to talk about her diagnosis, talk about these complex decisions.”

When the time came for her operation, “I scrubbed in on her surgery. I was first assist, and I was able to see her in the hospital after. I think it really meant a lot to her, and it certainly meant a lot to me,” Pederson says. “I saw her for a few followup appointments after her surgery, and she’s doing well.

“People with cancer really struggle to find continuity with their providers. That’s a big part of what a good family physician can do: help patients feel comfortable and at home. It was a fantastic experience for me.”

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Scholarship Winner | Andrea Stember

2013-04-29T19:48:49Z

Scholarships allow a champion pole-vaulter to set a high bar in medical school, too

Andrea Stember knows how to seize an opportunity. When an ankle injury curtailed her budding career as a teenage gymnast, the Bemidji resident decided to take up pole-vaulting. Astonishingly, she managed to break the school record on her first try.

“It was not a lofty goal,” Stember jokes. “The record wasn’t all that impressive.” Still, her initial success spurred her to put some serious effort into the sport — practicing for hours, attending training camps — and she eventually won the state pole-vault championships three years in a row.

“I worked hard to get better at it,” she says. “If you set your mind to it, you can accomplish it.”

Hard work is important, but Stember, now a 27-year-old medical student at the University of Minnesota, also acknowledges the help she’s received from other people on life’s path. Her coach played a vital role in her success as a vaulter, and generous scholarship support has made her enrollment at the U and her medical studies possible.

Confronting challenges

Stember grew up in northern Minnesota, in a family of five that grappled with medical issues almost daily. Her oldest brother was born with a host of complex health problems, including serious immune deficiencies and type 1 diabetes. When the family wasn’t hunting, canoeing, gathering wild rice, tapping trees for maple syrup, or traveling to trapping conventions (where Stember participated in tomahawk-throwing competitions), they were often attending medical appointments. Stember remembers tagging along — her toy doctor’s case in hand — as they visited innumerable clinics and hospitals.

Those visits made an impression on Stember. “My brother’s doctors were sometimes annoyed if my mother had one too many questions or my father didn’t understand something that the doctor had said,” she recalls. “So I try to keep that in mind when I interact with people: When a doctor says something, it’s like a foreign language to someone who doesn’t know medicine. I need to … remind myself that my whole reason for being there is to care for the patient — and that may include caring for his or her family, too.”

New drug treatments, multiple surgeries, organ transplants, and a positive attitude have kept Stember’s brother alive over the years. But caring for him has been both an emotional and financial drain on the family. When Stember turned 17 and decided to pursue a college education, her parents — her father is a construction worker and her mother a paraprofessional for the Bemidji school district — could offer little financial help. Her summer job cleaning cabins didn’t pay enough to cover tuition, either.

Reaching new heights

To Stember’s surprise, pole-vaulting provided the answer: “Through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, and many hours on the track, I was recruited out of high school,” Stember says. “Had it not been for the scholarships offered to me, I would have not even considered attending the U, and I would have missed out on an incredible undergraduate experience.” Ultimately, she received a full academic scholarship that supported her as a sophomore, junior, and senior.

In 2008, Stember completed her undergraduate degree, majoring in biology, society, and the environment. She planned to go on to medical school, but again required financial assistance. Now in her fourth year of medical school, Stember is grateful for the support of four different scholarships, including the 2012 Samuel J. Ravitch Scholarship.

“It definitely eases the burden and the stress,” she observes. “Financial stress doesn’t go away. The tests come and go, and you can cross those off the list, but the [expenses] continue to pile up.”

This summer, Stember will begin her emergency medicine residency at the Denver Health Medical Center.

But she’s already putting her technical knowledge and bedside manner into practice. last spring, her brother underwent a pancreas transplant, and Stember found her family turning to her for answers.

Being immersed in the situation as both a family member and a doctor-tobe reinforced the notion that practicing medicine requires empathy, as well as technical knowledge. “It reminded me that when a family is in a stressful situation, the things you say as a doctor don’t necessarily stick,” Stember says. “you have to take all that into account.”

By Joel Hoekstra, a Minneapolis-based writer and editor

Web extras

Slideshow: Scholarship recipient reaches new heights

Scholarship recipient and champion pole-vaulter Andrea Stember sets a high bar in Medical School. View a photo slideshow featuring Stember’s extracurricular activities.

Make a gift

To make a gift, visit
www.give.umn.edu/giveto/meded.

Continuing their legacy

Many Medical School alumni continue to have a lasting impact — even years and years after their deaths — by having created endowed scholarships for medical students.

Andrea Stember, for instance, has benefited from the Samuel J. Ravitch (Class of 1926) Scholarship, the B. A. Dyar (Class of 1905) and Robert Dyar (Class of 1934) Memorial Scholarship, and the Dr. Harry F. (Class of 1947) and Grace E. Burich Scholarship. (Stember also has received the David A. Dunshee Scholarship, established by the former medical student’s family in his memory.)

Gifts to endowed scholarship funds truly keep on giving. The principal gift amount is invested and continues to grow over time, while the interest it accrues is paid out annually as a scholarship to help defray the rising costs of medical school for an outstanding student.

To learn more about creating an endowed scholarship fund at the University of Minnesota Medical School, contact Teri McIntyre at 612-625-5976 or mcintyre@umn.edu.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Couple creates their own loan-forgiveness fund

2013-04-29T19:43:25Z

Margaret Hustad-Perrin, M.D., is concerned about the increasingly specialized future of medicine.

“Fewer and fewer people are choosing to go into primary care,” says the recently retired pediatrician and 1976 Medical School alumna.

Some studies have indicated that medical students are being steered away from primary care fields such as family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics at least partly because they offer less earning potential than subspecialties. With the way the medical system is set up today, Hustad-Perrin says, “physicians tend to be better compensated for doing procedures than for spending more time with patients.”

So to encourage students who are passionate about primary care to stick with it, she and her husband, David Perrin, M.S.W., have set aside $1 million in their estate plan to create a loanforgiveness fund for those who plan to pursue primary-care pediatrics, primarycare internal medicine, family medicine, medicine-pediatrics, or psychiatry.

Whereas a traditional scholarship would provide the financial support regardless of changes in the recipients’ career paths, loans through this fund will be forgiven at a prorated amount — about 20 percent for each of five years — as the recipients continue their careers in primary care.

“To the small degree we can make it possible,” Perrin says, “we want to make sure that money does not sway the decision.”

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

After anticipation, relief!

2013-04-29T19:40:54Z

A sense of anticipation filled the McNamara Alumni Center March 15 as 225 fourth-year medical students waited to receive the envelopes containing a glimpse of their futures: the results of their residency matches.

On Match Day 2013, 46.7 percent of the Medical School’s graduating class learned that they’d be joining primary care residency programs. Family medicine (18.2 percent), internal medicine (16 percent), and pediatrics (8.9 percent) were the most popular fields, followed by general surgery (7.1 percent) and emergency medicine (5.8 percent).

Web extras

Slideshow: Meeting their match

See a slideshow of Medical School students celebrating Match Day on March 15, 2013.

Match Day 2013 - Health Talk

Find more stats and see how students reacted to Match Day 2013.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Grief, grace, and giving

2012-11-26T15:54:39Z

Couple’s gift enables medical students to learn, serve abroad

Russ Scheffler enjoyed medical students. For the two-and-a- half years he lived with cancer of the appendix, he befriended, quizzed, and “tormented” several of them, recalls his wife, Kathy. He recognized the teaching value of his illness, and welcomed the presence of aspiring physicians in the room.

“He liked all the attention, he liked that interaction,” Kathy Scheffler says. When his University of Minnesota surgeon, Todd Tuttle, M.D., mentioned plans to bring a student on an upcoming medical mission trip to Honduras, Russ offered to pay for the student’s trip. That was news to Kathy, but she loved the idea.

A blended gift with global impact

Although that trip was canceled because of a logistical snafu, the seed had been planted for a legacy that would soon have global impact. “During that process, my husband’s health kept declining. I think he was feeling like, ‘How do I give something back?’” Scheffler says.

The couple spoke with Tuttle about creating a scholarship fund that would allow him to bring two second-year medical students abroad each year on surgical mission trips. They spent the summer of 2011 setting up a blended gift — an outright gift and a planned contribution.

The Scheffler International Medical Mission Trip Award began with a $5,000-per-year donation that grew through a life-insurance policy and memorial gifts upon Russ’s passing. At press time, more than $32,000 had been donated to the fund — including $500 in proceeds from a garage sale organized by the 11-year-old daughter of close family friends.

“Russ always looked for that unique need that he felt wasn’t being met,” Scheffler says. “This was right up his alley.”

A ‘passion for international medicine’

Tuttle says he is glad to see more opportunities for surgeons who want to volunteer abroad. “I also wanted to use these experiences to help train surgeons — maybe inspire someone to make international medicine more of a career.”

This summer, he elected to bring the first two Scheffler scholarship recipients to Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (NPH), an orphanage and clinic outside Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. “We wanted somebody with a passion for international medicine,” Tuttle says, and Allison Bradee and Greg Carlson fit the bill.

Bradee, who majored in Spanish and has volunteered in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, says she won’t soon forget the gratitude of the Honduran patients she met. Many could not afford to pay upfront for medical care and simply wouldn’t have been treated without the NPH team.

The weeklong trip was incredibly rewarding, says Carlson, who had previously volunteered in Peru and Tanzania. So was the opportunity to meet Kathy Scheffler, who was committed to seeing firsthand the vision for the scholarship fulfilled. At one particularly emotional point toward the trip’s end, she shared her husband’s story with Carlson and Bradee.

“It’s really inspiring to me that she was able to go and do this,” Carlson says. “It made me feel like I can’t let her down.”

The trip affirmed Carlson’s resolve to incorporate international volunteerism into his medical practice someday.

“I wasn’t doing it as a résumé-builder; this is something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life.”

By Susan Maas

To learn more about creating a planned gift at the University of Minnesota, contact Jay Kautt, J.D., at 612-626-0510 or j.kautt@mmf.umn.edu.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Scholarship aims to draw new doctors back to their rural roots

2012-11-26T15:51:54Z

For most students, committing to medical school comes with a hefty price tag, the weight of which can be overwhelming.

Enter Avera Marshall. For six years, the regional medical center in southwestern Minnesota has been working to lift that weight in hopes of inspiring future doctors to return to the area.

The key word is “return.” That’s because Avera Marshall’s generous scholarships are granted to first-year medical students who hail from Marshall, Minn., and its surrounding counties. Yet, there are no strings attached.

“There is no payback, no commitment — this is purely a gift,” says Karrie Schipper, physician recruiter for the Avera Medical Group. “When medical students complete medical school and residency, the average amount of their loans is $160,000. We’re hoping that this scholarship is a start toward relieving this daunting amount.”

One scholarship — based on financial need, as well as GPA and a personal letter — is awarded each year to a student at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, which specializes in training doctors in rural medical care.

The selected recipient receives $12,000 for the first year of medical school, then $4,000 each year after that, dependent on academic performance, for a total of $24,000. (Avera Marshall annually awards an identical scholarship to a student at the University of South Dakota’s medical school in Vermillion.)

Yet the scholarship is just the beginning. “One of the scholarship’s advantages is that I’ve gotten to know Schipper and Mary Maertens [president and CEO of Avera Marshall] very well,” says scholarship recipient Jonna Maas, a third-year medical student from Walnut Grove, Minn. Through emails, phone calls, annual scholarship dinners, and more, Maas interacts regularly with Avera Marshall physicians and administrators — many of whom she got to know during a summer internship as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota, Morris.

“Jonna is a perfect role model for what we look for in a physician,” says Schipper. “She’s got one of those magnetic personalities. She’s kind and compassionate and has Midwestern values. She also grew up on a cattle farm in rural Minnesota and got to experience rural health care, and she wants an opportunity to give back to the rural area. She’s a phenomenal person, and she’ll do well no matter where she goes.”

Of course, the staff at Avera Marshall hopes she’ll return to the area. Schipper points out that the United States is facing a serious shortage of primary care and rural physicians and that attracting new doctors to the area is crucial.

“We offer competitive compensation packages and the lifestyle many new physicians are looking for,” she says. “When you’re on call in a rural community, you can go home and sleep in your own bed.”

Avera Marshall offers an additional incentive: For doctors who sign on with the medical center, they often offer loan forgiveness, certainly a draw for up-and-coming physicians like Maas.

In the meantime, Maas is grateful for her scholarship. “The reality is that medical school is expensive, and there is no time to work a job and no summers off,” she says. “It’s very humbling to know I have support from Avera Marshall. It’s such an honor and so appreciated.”

By Karin Miller

To learn more about creating a scholarship at the University of Minnesota Medical School, contact Teri McIntyre at 612-625-5976 or t.mcintyre@mmf.umn.edu.

To make a gift, visit www.mmf.umn.edu/giveto/medicalstudents.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Minnesota's Future Doctors measure up

2012-04-19T23:30:25Z

After witnessing the ravages of war in his native country of Somalia, Mohamed Hassan was determined to pursue a career in medicine. “I was inspired [to act] by seeing the civil war … and many people dying of simple things that could easily be cured,” he says.

Hassan, who moved to Minneapolis at the age of 10 and graduated from South High School, didn’t know how he would reach his goal — until he learned about Minnesota’s Future Doctors, which put the U of M junior on track to begin medical school in 2013.

Now in its fifth year, the University of Minnesota program prepares undergraduates from underrepresented communities across the state for admission to medical school. It offers counseling and courses that prepare these students for the competitive application process and provides shadowing, mentorship, and internship opportunities that give students a close-up look at what it means to be a doctor.

With help from Minnesota’s Future Doctors for the last three years, Hassan is a big step closer to achieving his dream. “Through the Minnesota’s Future Doctors program, I learned what it takes to be a solid [premedical student] and all of the different things one has to do outside of academics,” he says.

Today’s Future Doctors

Today’s Future Doctors are highly talented and motivated, as program director Jo Peterson, Ph.D., attests. “These kids take my breath away at every turn,” she says. “They represent the best of who we are as a society.”

In addition to their everyday undergraduate studies, they participate in numerous academic, professional, and community-building activities. Hassan, for example, is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biology, society, and environment, and recently completed a summer internship at Yale School of Medicine, an opportunity he found through Minnesota’s Future Doctors.

“If it wasn’t for Minnesota’s Future Doctors, I wouldn’t have heard about the program, nor would I have had the courage to apply to such a prestigious Ivy League school,” he says. “The program has helped me to believe in myself and reach for things I never imagined possible.”

The Minnesota’s Future Doctors program strives to help students like Hassan accomplish their goals of becoming physicians. Continue reading to learn more about three other students and their paths to medical school.

Student profile: Rachel Kay

St. Paul native Rachel Kay, who is working toward her bachelor’s degree in human evolutionary biology at Harvard College, hopes to return to the Midwest to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. Read more about Kay’s goal of working in a level 1 trauma center and how her experience with the Minnesota’s Future Doctors programs is invaluable.

Student profile: Joohee Han

University of Minnesota undergraduate student Joohee Han plans to begin medical school in August 2013. Of being involved in Minnesota’s Future Doctors, Han says, “The program means everything to my future.” Read more about Han’s amazing journey to Minnesota and how she plans to tackle her goals of being a doctor.

Student profile: Daniel Cheriye

Future University of Minnesota Medical School student and Ethiopia native Daniel Cheriye aspires to become a neurosurgeon. Read more about why Cheriye decided to pursue medicine and how the Minnesota’s Future Doctors program helped him achieve his goals.

By Lesley Schack, associate director of donor relations at the Minnesota Medical Foundation

Web Extras

Minnesota’s Future Doctors program

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Minnesota's Future Doctors student profile: Daniel Cheriye

2012-04-19T23:21:20Z

Hometown: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

High school: Higher 23 Senior Secondary School, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Undergraduate college: University of Minnesota

Undergraduate degree: Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry (August 2011)

Anticipated medical school and start date: University of Minnesota Medical School (August 2012)

Academic and/or professional goals: Become a neurosurgeon.

Inspiration for pursuing a career in medicine: “I had the opportunity to understand the role of medicine in human life at an early age. I grew up in a country where there are only 2,000 practicing physicians for 85 million people. As a result, patients have to wait in line for several hours to get treatment. I have witnessed close family members, friends, and other relatives suffer and die from treatable illnesses. The first time I felt the joy of becoming a physician was after I witnessed a couple rushed into the ER after being injured in a car accident. I observed the struggle and passion of the doctors to save the lives of the couple. Even though they couldn’t save the wife, due to the severity of her injury, I have always been reminded of their relentless effort and calmness in saving the husband. As I grew up, I saw many more similar situations and my passion for medicine grew. I also have a strong admiration for the anatomy and physiology of the human body and would love to learn and understand in detail how the body functions.”

The impact of Minnesota’s Future Doctors: “Minnesota’s Future Doctors means a lot to me. Without the workshops, advice, and financial and professional support I would not have achieved the progress I made in preparing for medical school. I am very thankful for the help I received from the Future Doctors program. Dr. Jo Peterson is more than a mentor for me. I consider her a close family member.”

Learn more

Read more about the Minnesota’s Future Doctor’s programs and learn how three other students are working towards their dreams of attending medical school.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Minnesota's Future Doctors student profile: Joohee Han

2012-04-19T23:18:08Z

Hometowns: Born in Iri, South Korea, and moved 11 times during first 10 years of life. She says Minneapolis gave her family the “best home they could ask for.”

High school: Robbinsdale Armstrong High School, Plymouth, Minn.

Current undergraduate college: University of Minnesota

Anticipated undergraduate degrees: Bachelor’s degrees in genetics, cell biology, and development and in physiology with a minor in chemistry

Anticipated medical school and start date: Dream schools include: Mayo Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Minnesota (August 2013)

Academic and/or professional goals: Receive an M.D. or M.D. /Ph.D. degree and continuously absorb new knowledge in medicine and science. Stay in academics to become a professor and principal investigator and enhance global health care customer service.

Inspiration for pursuing a career in medicine: “When I first arrived in the United States, I had many disabilities. I was blind to written words, deaf to expressive sounds, and mute to express myself. Without the English language, I was helpless. That feeling of isolation was [lessened], however, due to the benevolence of great volunteers, teachers, and friends who became my senses and, finally, taught me to fine-tune my senses. When I was most vulnerable, people with great hearts lent me their hands.

In retrospect, my challenge was very minor. For those who suffer greater health problems, I want to lend my hands during the most frustrating and isolating times with the foundation of medicine and science that I have built throughout my academic career. I have shadowed and learned about other professions and how each greatly helps the world in various ways. However, it was the medical doctors I shadowed who seemed to hold the key to improving the quality of human health at the most personal level.”

The impact of Minnesota’s Future Doctors: “The Minnesota’s Future Doctors program means the world to me. Despite my goals and ambition, my path toward medicine was doubtful before the Minnesota’s Future Doctors program. With financial struggles, I did not have the time and support to search for resources and mentors by myself. I also did not have the strong moral support that I now continuously receive from the program.

Minnesota’s Future Doctors gave me peace of mind. I am heavily involved in academics, work, and extracurricular activities. It is the Minnesota’s Future Doctors program that keeps me focused and gives me confidence. The program is always there to help me achieve my goals. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Jo Peterson for her mentorship, resourcefulness, and frequent “How’s it going?” or “You are doing great!” emails. The Minnesota’s Future Doctors program means everything to my future.”

Learn more

Read more about the Minnesota’s Future Doctor’s programs and learn how three other students are working towards their dreams of attending medical school.

You can make a difference

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Minnesota's Future Doctors student profile: Rachel Kay

2012-04-19T23:13:08Z

Hometown: St. Paul, Minnesota

High school: Central High School, St. Paul

Current undergraduate college: Harvard College

Anticipated undergraduate degree: Bachelor’s degree in human evolutionary biology

Anticipated medical school and start date: University of Minnesota Medical School or another medical school on the East Coast or in the Midwest (2014 or 2015)

Academic and/or Professional Goals: Graduate with honors and a foreign language citation in Spanish and work in the emergency department of a level 1 trauma center.

Inspiration for pursuing a career in medicine: “My interest in medicine stemmed from a fascination with how the human body functions and the enjoyment I experience when interacting with a wide variety of people and hearing their stories. Participating in Minnesota’s Future Doctors, volunteering at Children’s Hospital in the Pediatric Epilepsy Unit, and conducting clinical research at Hennepin County Medical Center, strengthened my decision to pursue a career in medicine.. I love the learning process and want a career in which learning will be a lifelong pursuit. In my roles as a volunteer, researcher, student, and family member of a patient, I realize that physicians can have a significant impact on the lives of multiple individuals beyond the direct treatment of medical conditions. Medicine combines my passions, and I can think of no other pursuit toward which I [would rather] direct my energy and focus.”

The impact of Minnesota’s Future Doctors: “Minnesota’s Future Doctors has provided me with unlimited support and the tools to achieve my medical career goals. Through the program, I learned about ways to strengthen my applicant profile. The program’s focus on health disparities has influenced my selection of extracurricular activities. Jo [Peterson’s] guidance is invaluable, and I strongly believe that the Minnesota’s Future Doctors program has increased my likelihood of success in medicine.”

Learn more

Read more about the Minnesota’s Future Doctor’s programs and learn how three other students are working towards their dreams of attending medical school.

You can make a difference

Help the University of Minnesota save lives, inspire hope, and prepare the world’s future health care leaders. Make a gift today.

Because with your support, anything is possible.

Scholarship Winner | Noah Wride

2012-04-19T21:29:07Z

Embracing Hopi culture on the journey to becoming a doctor

When second-year medical student and scholarship winner Noah Wride compares becoming a physician to running a marathon, it’s not an idle metaphor. Wride has tackled two marathons since moving to Minnesota, and he knows a little something about discipline and perseverance.

Having first explored medicine as a high school student in American Fork, Utah, while participating in an outreach program for Native American scholars at the University of Utah School of Medicine, Wride knows he’s in it for the long haul.

A member of the Hopi nation, Wride grew up fascinated by biology and the natural world. “I’d collect bugs. … I really enjoyed being outside, and I had all kinds of pets,” he recalls.

That interest turned to research when he participated in the Expanded Indian Nations Program at the Utah medical school and worked with scientist E. Dale Abel, M.D., Ph.D., on the use of hormones to treat muscle-wasting disorders.

His parents and grandparents nurtured such intellectual passions in Wride, who is a direct descendant of Hopi Chief Loloma—and proud of his heritage. In the late 19th century, Loloma traveled to Washington, D.C., to assert the tribe’s right to enjoy its land and practice the Hopi religion. Returning home, Loloma spoke to his people about Western education as a necessary means for survival:

“My children, let us not be afraid of the days to come. The [white] way of life is here to stay and we must accept that. I feel in my heart that we can find a way to survive as a people. I say to you all … learn the white man’s tongue and learn how he thinks. Learn his ways so that we can all survive with it.” (Source: Hopi Education Endowment Fund)

“I grew up hearing that story all the time. I’ve been taught about Hopi culture and history for as long as I can remember,” Wride says. “[Chief Loloma] is one of my grandma’s heroes. She has this picture of him on a donkey, riding off into the desert. That picture sticks in my mind.”

So does the lack of access to medical care Wride has observed on visits to the Hopi reservation in Arizona. “I’m very aware that there’s little access to health care — and to health care education — for Native Americans,” Wride says. “Hopefully, I can help with that.”

Eager to give back

The desire to give back is a recurring theme for Wride, who says, “I feel like, to a large extent, I’m here today because of outreach programs. At some point in my career, I want to be able to give the same opportunities, the same guidance, to somebody else.”

Wride’s Minnesota role models include his adviser, internist and associate professor of medicine Peter Weissmann, M.D., and assistant professor of medicine Brian Sick, M.D., medical director of the Phillips Neighborhood Clinic, which provides accessible, culturally appropriate health care to underserved patients in Minneapolis. “It’s great to get to know these doctors who are very good at what they do, but also good people,” Wride says.

“I’m grateful to have such a strong support system — I feel like I’m at the right place,” he adds. That support includes the Cassius Ellis Scholarship, which honors the late Cassius M.C. Ellis III, M.D. A longtime clinical professor in the Department of Surgery, Ellis also was the first assistant dean for minority students at the Medical School. Wride says he’s honored to hold a scholarship that recognizes Ellis and his commitment to increasing diversity in medicine.

Renaissance man

Wride remains enthusiastic about endocrinology but also has a growing interest in emergency medicine. “I like working with people; I want a career where I can see a wide diversity of people with a wide range of problems.”

Whatever specialty he chooses, Wride plans to seek balance in his life. Spending time outdoors is just one way he recharges.

He’s also an accomplished jazz pianist. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t come home after a long day and sit down at the piano. The stress just melts away,” he says. “You can’t let medicine be everything [or] you’re going to burn out.”

And there’s running. Wride keeps his marathon experience in mind as he works toward becoming a doctor. “The amount of schooling it takes to even get here is huge … and then finishing med school, and then your residency, and then a fellowship, it’s almost like it never ends.” But he’s enjoying the journey— just as he relishes the challenge of running the Twin Cities Marathon.

“I don’t think there’s any feeling that equals crossing the finish line. It’s almost a spiritual feeling to finally get to your destination.”

By Susan Maas, a freelance writer living in Minneapolis

Web Extras

Jazz piano improvisation

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Match Day: The envelope, please ...

2012-04-19T20:21:14Z

The envelope, please…

On March 16, 213 graduating University of Minnesota Medical School students each opened a small envelope containing big news: the site of their residencies.

Here are some highlights of this year’s Match Day, a national rite of passage that happens at the same time at medical schools across the country:

97 graduating University of Minnesota Medical School students matched to 12 locations across the state.
41 students will stay at the University of Minnesota for their residencies.
38 students matched in family medicine and another 36 matched in internal medicine.
22 students — about 10 percent of the graduating class — will complete residencies in emergency medicine.

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Attend the inspiring White Coat rite

2012-04-19T18:02:06Z

Remember the first time you slipped on your white coat? Relive those memories at the Medical School’s White Coat Ceremony, at 1 p.m., Friday, August 10, at the Ted Mann Concert Hall. First-year medical students complete their orientation week by donning their white coats for the first time, then taking an oath to uphold professionalism and humanitarianism in medicine. This inspiring rite of passage is now a Medical School tradition, and alumni are invited to join faculty as they welcome first-year students into the world of medicine.

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Medical school programs rank among top 10

2012-04-19T17:04:08Z

Three University of Minnesota Medical School programs rank among the top 10 of their kinds, according to the spring edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The Medical School’s rural medicine program ranked third, its primary care program ranked eighth, and its family medicine program ranked 10th.

The Medical School was named 17th among medical schools at public universities and 39th overall.

Other schools of the Academic Health Center also were highly ranked this year:

College of Pharmacy (3rd)
School of Public Health (5th among public universities and 8th overall)
College of Veterinary Medicine (9th)
School of Nursing (21st)

Also listed among the top in their fields were several of the University’s health sciences programs: health care management (2nd), clinical psychology (6th), community health/nursing (6th), midwifery/nursing (8th), physical therapy (19th), and speech-language pathology (17th).

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Improving lung health abroad

2012-03-19T19:42:34Z

U Medical School, public health students study mesothelioma in India

Learning became a global endeavor for Lan Luu and Emily Olson, both University of Minnesota students in the Medical School and School of Public Health, when they traveled to India last August for a research study on asbestos exposure and mesothelioma, a deadly lung cancer.

“[Asbestos] is banned in developed countries. So many are shipping it to places like India, because there’s not a lot of regulation,” says Luu. “People are breathing in this material. If you’re exposed to asbestos, it can lead to a number of different lung diseases and increase your risk of getting mesothelioma.”

The research project, a joint effort of the Medical School, Center for Lung Science and Health, and the School of Public Health (SPH), aims to find ways to prevent lung disease, says Jeffrey Mandel, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor in the SPH’s Division of Environmental Health Sciences.

For their role in the study, Luu and Olson focused on investigating how India’s health care system works and how it handles exposure to asbestos, then the pair are recommending a framework for future research collaborations related to this project.

Learning while helping others

When they arrived in Mumbai, India, last August, Olson and Luu were teamed with doctors, lawyers, and human rights workers who were gathering medical data from workers who may have been exposed to asbestos.

Olson and Luu surveyed the medical data, including pulmonary tests and X-rays, then worked with demographers and economists to interpret what the collected data meant. The pair looked for data patterns and made suggestions for project improvement.

“We kept finding holes in the data that, if filled, would help make it stronger, such as getting occupational health histories,” says Luu, a second-year medical student who has a master’s degree in public health from the University. “Digging deep and asking the right questions can really make a difference,” added Olson.

Already a fourth-year medical student, Olson’s work on the project also served as an introduction to her SPH master’s program. “The project helped me not only see the importance of regulations, but the attention that society needs to pay to vulnerable populations and our ability to make a difference in their lives if we do pay attention,” she says.

Luu’s and Olson’s work was the first phase of this project. Next, faculty from India will be coming to the University of Minnesota to collaborate, says Mandel, who is also working to secure funding to train public health and medical students for work on future mesothelioma research in India. He is hoping to have this in place within the next year.

“The last phase of the project would involve getting support for doing more advanced work in India—the actual work of reaching the public,” he says.

Importance of philanthropic support

“This trip would not have been possible without scholarships,” says Olson, who along with Luu, received financial support from the University’s International Medical Education and Research Program (IMER), the Center for Lung Science and Health, and Mandel.

“But more support is needed,” adds Mandel.

“It is important to train clinical and public health students in India in the methods needed to address dust-related lung disease,” he says of the funding need. “They have little capacity to address these problems within India.”

“The scholarships were very helpful,” says Luu. “We were able to go there and focus on the project—not think, ‘How will we pay for this trip?’ Donor support gives students a unique opportunity to learn about a country unlike their own,” she adds. “I wouldn’t have been able to go on the trip without it.”

Career-shaping lessons

Though they were in India for only a few weeks, the students say they learned a great deal about public health challenges, and the experience will likely help to shape their careers.

“I feel more connected to the bigger issues that can affect a patient population,” says Olson. “It’s not just about the disease, but what factors led to the disease and how can we address those in the bigger social context.”

“I haven’t chosen a medical specialty yet, but I will take these lessons with me wherever I go,” she added. “I think it will help me be a more well-rounded physician and clinician.”

For Luu, the experience helped her connect with her passion. “I grew up in an underserved community in San Francisco, so I want to help. This is what I’m passionate about —what I feel connected to,” she says.

“I’ve learned a lot about law, how workers get compensated and about occupational health,” Luu adds. “Being in a community with a vulnerable population that needs help is pushing me more in that direction. This is where I can make a difference.”

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Scholarship support: Breathing new life into medical education

2012-02-17T18:50:36Z

Resuscitation expert, alumnus supports Medical School scholarships through planned gifts

While stationed at the Naval Hospital in Pensacola, Fla. in 1962, Jerome Modell, M.D., D.Sc. (Hon.), had a career-changing close call involving a critically ill patient.

“A flight surgery student from Japan drowned,” recalls Modell, a 1957 graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School. Although he was able to save the patient’s life, Modell was hampered by a lack of treatment protocols related to drowning.

Another complication: “We didn’t have intensive care units back then,” he says.

In the years that followed, Modell led efforts to establish one of Florida’s first Intensive Care Units at Jackson Memorial Hospital at the University of Miami, and later became a national expert in resuscitation and drowning.

That’s how Modell operates; when he sees a need, he becomes part of the solution. That’s also how he approaches philanthropy.

“I think everyone should give back,” says Modell, mentioning that he is concerned by the debt most current medical students carry. That’s why he created a scholarship for U of M medical students in memory of his parents, William and Frieda Modell, in 1999. And it’s why nine years later, he and his wife, Shirley Graves Modell, M.D.—a pediatric anesthesiologist and intensivist—created a second scholarship in their own names at the Medical School.

To make the most of their giving, the Modells used estate planning tools that help support medical education while also securing their own financial future.

The couple created a $100,000 charitable gift annuity (CGA) to establish the Drs. Jerome and Shirley Graves Modell Endowed Medical Student Scholarship Fund, which provides them with lifetime income and tax benefits.

“You receive income,” Jerome Modell says of the CGA benefits. “Instead of letting our money sit, the University benefits,” he added. “It’s a relatively painless way to give.”

Work ethic honed at the U

When he was in medical school in the 1950s, Modell worked for University of Minnesota scientists Samuel Schwartz, M.D., Ph.D., and Cecil Watson, M.D., assisting in some of the first-ever experiments of chemotherapy as they combined hematoporphyrin with radiation therapy to treat cancer .

“That was kind of an exciting thing,” he recalls. “I worked in the laboratory for Dr. Schwartz and I learned a lot about research.”

Modell’s accomplished career includes multiple scientific publications as well as numerous high-profile awards such as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Critical Care Anesthesiologists, the Distinguished Service Award from the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and the President’s Medallion and Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University of Florida.

He also has had notable appointments—including serving on the original medical team for Project Mercury, which was the first program to launch astronauts into space. He has been on the faculty at the University of Florida College of Medicine for 42 years where he served as Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, Executive Associate Dean and Interim Dean of the College of Medicine, and as Associate Vice-President for Health Affairs.

His own success, built on a modest upbringing, makes giving back all the more important, says Modell. “My wife and I both came from fairly meager financial backgrounds with very hardworking parents,” he explains. “They always believed in education.”

The impact of giving

Today, that commitment is building medical careers.

Former Modell scholarship recipient Andrea Watson, M.D., for example, is now a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Erick Peter Person Children’s Cancer Center in Duluth, Minn. She received the scholarship honoring Modell’s parents in 2001 while attending medical school at the University of Minnesota.

“I remember feeling, like—‘Wow!’” she says of the award. “The symbolic nature of someone helping you means a lot and says a lot. It’s really humbling that they believe in you.”

The scholarship, Watson says, helped her meet financial challenges. “At that time, I had just had a baby. [The scholarship] made life a little easier and doable at the time.”

Watson adds that the financial support also allowed her to focus on finding her professional calling. She initially started on the family practice track, but after her residency training found that she loved working with children and families touched by cancer.

“It’s an intense connection,” she says of her relationships with her patients and their families. “This was everything I was in medicine for. It’s amazing and I love it.”

Watson says that being a scholarship recipient has influenced her ideas about philanthropy and medical education—and has inspired her to follow Modell’s example. “It makes me want to be that person for someone else,” she says.

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A showroom for innovative education

2011-12-05T17:39:47Z

Mayo D325 is no ordinary classroom. Gone are the podium and rows of tables and chairs — and along with it, the lecture-andnotes model of education that traditionally has transpired there.

The classroom reopened for fall semester as the Mercy Learning Lab, a redesigned and re-equipped facility that includes larger tables meant to promote discussion and teamwork as well as a high-tech hub that controls a wireless, large-screen HD projector; ITV for global video conferencing; and more.

The new space — named in recognition of Mercy Health System, which is based in Janesville, Wis. — was made possible by a $275,000 gift from Mercy Health System and its president and CEO, Javon R. Bea, M.H.A., a 1978 alumnus of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health’s Master of Healthcare Administration (M.H.A.) program.

Over the last two decades, Bea’s leadership at Mercy Health System has helped to transform it from a stand-alone hospital to a vertically integrated health system with 64 facilities that serve 24 communities in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

Bea says he’s excited by the didactic, interactive atmosphere the University’s new learning lab creates for students.

“The electronics of this classroom really let the students get engaged not only with their professors but also with each other,” he says. “It really is going to better simulate the way problem solving occurs in the corporate environment. As a result, the level of knowledge and critical thinking ability will increase as well. Students will be even more prepared for the work environment than they are today, and that is exciting to me.”

The Mercy Learning Lab isn’t the health system’s first connection to the University’s M.H.A. program. Over the last 22 years, Mercy has provided administrative fellowships to more than 35 M.H.A. graduates — and Bea has hired every one of them afterward.

“I’m always impressed by how well prepared they are when they arrive and their enthusiasm to dive right in and put their knowledge to work at Mercy,” he says of University M.H.A. program graduates. “It truly is a testament to the great health care administration program offered [through the] M.H.A. Providing these fellowships has been a win-win situation for our fellows and for Mercy.”

And for Bea, it feels good to open doors for new graduates, just as alumni before him have done for his generation.

“We have a tight-knit family at the M.H.A. program,” he says. “It’s a tremendous program, and I’m excited to provide this technology to enhance learning for future students.”

By Nicole Endres

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Professor emeritus starts campaign to help neurology residents attend national conferences

2011-11-02T14:55:35Z

For neurologist Arthur Klassen, M.D., teaching is a lifelong passion.

Now a professor emeritus, Klassen spent 37 years on the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Neurology Department faculty. During that time, he served as acting chair, built a brain blood-flow lab, and established one of the nation’s first stroke intensive care units.

“But I still think of training medical students and residents as being among the most significant and lasting things I’ve done,” says Klassen, who also led the department’s residency program.

Klassen believes that one of the critical places where young clinicians learn is far from campus. Attending a national conference such as the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology is not only a training program requirement, but it’s also a key career move, he says.

“The national conferences are where residents are exposed to the tremendous breadth of current research in the field,” he says. “They have the opportunity to hear the major minds of neurology giving lectures and discussing recent findings. And they have a chance to present their own research.”

These conferences also provide young neurologists with a place to network.

And as state funding for residency programs has tightened over the past few years, Klassen saw a chance to secure that opportunity for neurology residents.

At first, he intended to give a modest gift to help out. Then he realized a sizeable donation could have a more enduring effect, so he gave $50,000 to create the Neurology Resident Educational Travel Fund.

“My hope was to seed a larger effort,” he says. “I really envisioned it as the beginning of a fundraising project that will hopefully become a permanent source of money to support this part of their training.”

His donation initiated a larger-scale effort to raise $300,000 for an endowed fund that will enable up to six residents a year to travel to key conferences.

“The neurology program is one of the premier in the country and always has been,” he says. “We have top-notch residents, many of whom go on to academic careers. Funding their ability to attend these national conferences is more than worthwhile—it’s providing them with the next level of opportunity.”

To contribute to the Neurology Resident Educational Travel Fund, visit www.mmf.umn.edu/giveto/klassen or contact Tracy Ketchem at 612-625-1906 or t.ketchem@mmf.umn.edu

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Humanitarian aid 101

2011-10-24T23:07:57Z

Students and clinicians get hands-on experience in international disaster relief

We’re in the midst of a deepening humanitarian crisis; chaos and confusion reign. The small disaster assessment team with which I’m traveling from one refugee camp to another has a seemingly straightforward mission — to gather information — but distractions and complications abound.

Bureaucratic roadblocks, political rivalries, run-ins with well-meaning but misguided missionaries, roving armed militias, aggressive journalists, even a rabid stray dog consume valuable time and attention. In turbulent Gopherstan, straining from a massive influx of refugees from Badgeria, it’s hard to stay focused on the task at hand.

Of course, Gopherstan isn’t a real place. It’s an imaginary country, a fictional composite of several global trouble spots, conceived by the American Refugee Committee’s Eric James and the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Sarah Kesler, M.D., for this year’s Global Health Course and James’s Humphrey Institute humanitarianism class. We’re actually at a Boy Scout camp in Cannon Falls, Minn., but the stress feels as palpable as the hot August sun overhead.

The Global Health Course, taught in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aims to decrease disparities in medicine, in part, by improving health care for immigrants, refugees, and travelers.

The course is open to practicing health professionals in addition to resident physicians in training. Gopherstan is meant to give course participants a taste of working under pressure in “resource-limited settings.”

Made up of rookie specialists in health, water and sanitation, shelter, security, and more, the fictional NGO team is charged with rapidly assessing humanitarian needs in a series of Gopherstan refugee camps. Among its many challenges is to avoid duplicating efforts with the growing hodgepodge of other aid organizations responding to the crisis — and conditions change quickly, unpredictably. As in real life, efficiency, a high tolerance for ambiguity, and the ability to hit the ground running are invaluable assets.

“The idea was to make this as realistic as possible,” James says.

Gopherstan takes on ‘a life of its own’

At one makeshift camp, in the village of Enjab, villagers sound overwhelmed. A local merchant named Chuck tells medical representative Sonya Haw, M.D., that “people have been sick; some [refugees] are dying,” though he can’t offer numbers or specifics. “We have a river nearby — people are getting their water from there,” Chuck says. “And I’ve seen some shallow graves outside of town.” Shifting gears, the merchant then tries to sell the team beans, rice, and plastic sheeting for shelter.

Student Abdi Ahmed, the simulation’s water and sanitation expert who’s charged with assessing the most socially appropriate way to set up latrines for the refugees, says that understanding cultural norms is one of the team’s biggest and toughest responsibilities. In each location, he adds, it’s imperative to identify village and refugee leaders who can represent different communities affected by the crisis.

Days later, Kesler, an internist, reflects that she was pleasantly surprised at how “this [fictional] world really kind of took on a life of its own.” Volunteer role-players brought creativity and their own ideas to the simulation: In one village the team encountered a physician who was having a psychotic breakdown — a reaction, participants deduced, to anti-malarial medication.

Global Health Course director William Stauffer, M.D., M.S.P.H., whose school-age sons were gun-toting child militia members and whose family dog played the role of rabid stray, was struck by how “adaptable” most of the students proved to be. “Many had never worked in any situation like this, and they did well,” Stauffer says. “It was stressful, and people had a corresponding intense experience. … I was impressed by how well most rose to the occasion.”

Looking to the future

Participants learned the importance of talking to “regular folks” in affected villages and camps, Kesler says. During the exercises, “the teams that engaged the common people ended up getting better information” than those who dealt exclusively with the leaders. This mirrors Kesler’s experiences working with organizations like Doctors Without Borders: Those who reach out to the people on the ground meet with greater success.

Global Health Course student Masha Bowen, a pediatric nurse practitioner who’s volunteered in Honduras and Haiti, agrees. She says the exercise underscored for her the value of building relationships in the community in which she’s working. “Really being in the community — connecting with people and staying for a long time — is important” to move beyond “the Band-Aid” syndrome, Bowen says.

Organizers say that despite a few rough spots, their first disaster response simulation together likely won’t be the last. “I don’t know if this event was the next best thing [to real-life experience], but we’d like to turn it into that,” Kesler says.

Stauffer agrees. “Creating chaos takes a lot of planning,” he says. “I think [next time] it will be bigger, longer, and more involved now that we have an idea of what we can pull off.”

Bowen already plans to return next year as a volunteer. “It was wonderful. The whole exercise felt so real … after it was over I actually felt a little posttraumatic stress.”

By Susan Maas, a freelance writer and editor who lives in Minneapolis

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Scholarship Winner | Robin Brusen

2011-10-24T22:38:01Z

Building a bridge—and a few other handy devices

Fourth-year medical student Robin Brusen is a problem solver.

While earning his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering at Northwestern University, he and a group of fellow students were charged with finding a quick, easy, cheap way to monitor premature infants in rural South Africa for sleep apnea.

They rigged up a prototype that would buzz if it couldn’t sense the baby’s breathing and then tested it on balloons in their college laboratory. They used the device’s deflection sensor to recharge its own battery.

“To actually see it working in the way you had intended it to work, it’s a pretty amazing feeling,” says Brusen, who is from Woodbury, Minn.

He wants more of that feeling. But he also wants to be on the front lines, helping others.

“As an engineer, you get to build all of these really interesting, cool therapies and devices, but you don’t get to see them come to full action. You build them … then you hand them off to the physicians to actually use them to help people,” Brusen says.

After concluding that his future was in medicine, Brusen naturally was drawn to the University of Minnesota Medical School’s dual-degree program in medicine and biomedical engineering.

The program, which allows students to complete both their M.D. and M.S. degrees in five years through a partnership with the College of Science and Engineering, is designed to prepare new physicians as leaders and “bridge builders” between medicine and technology in the ever-evolving biomedical device field.

“I’d like to figure out ways that we can take existing therapies, make them work equally well, but at a fraction of the cost. There have to be ways to make these devices cheaper. That’s one of the things we learned doing this sleep apnea monitor,” Brusen says. “You can basically re-create something that does the same thing but is much simpler and much less expensive.”

Rare opportunities

Through the dual-degree program, Brusen found stimulating work at the University’s Visible Heart Laboratory under the direction of Paul Iaizzo, Ph.D. The lab tests biomedical devices that are nearing clinical use, says Brusen, who found it exciting to experiment with products that could be on the market in just a year or two.

For his master’s project in the Visible Heart Laboratory, Brusen built an apparatus that cooled the heart and perfused it with a preservative solution, in hopes of extending the viability of donor hearts for transplant. (Right now, they can be preserved only four to six hours before the transplant for optimal outcomes.)

That project had “modest success,” he says. “It’s not something you’d want to transplant into somebody, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

And Brusen found that his product design and development class, offered jointly by the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Carlson School of Management, provided particularly useful real-world experience in bringing an idea to the market in 2011 — “a very, very complicated and expensive process,” he says.

As Brusen completes his last year of medical school, he is thankful for the many awards he has received — the Dr. William G. and Rosemary Kubicek Scholarship, the Scott D. and Susan D. Augustine Biomedical Engineering Research Fellowship, and the Lee and Bonnie Espeland Scholarship — to help him finance his five years of professional education.

“My scholarship benefactors have been with me every step of the way, easing my financial burden and allowing me to focus on helping others,” he says.

Bridging the gap

Brusen sees his future in academic medicine, where he’ll be able to treat patients but still conduct research. He’s now applying to internal medicine residency programs because the field offers so many directions for growth, he says.

“I see a lot of parallels between [internal medicine] and engineering. It’s a lot of problem solving,” Brusen says. “The process by which we come up with diagnoses is very similar to engineering design, where we start by brainstorming, coming up with reasons why some work and some don’t, and collecting more information to choose the best one. The goals and degrees of certainty are different, but the essentials of the process are almost exactly the same.”

In the end, Brusen hopes that understanding how a device works from an engineering standpoint will inform his decisions about whether or how to use it with patients.

“In this day and age, there’s so much technology — there’s no way one person can totally understand everything,” he says, “but I guess it would be nice to bridge that gap a little bit.”

At the suggestion of Iaizzo, his master’s program adviser, Brusen is keeping a small notebook to record the unmet clinical needs he comes across in practice and the little tasks or processes he thinks could be improved. He’ll review those ideas every so often, and when the timing is right, he’ll pursue them.

And though Brusen hasn’t earned his M.D. yet, he’s already got a few ideas in that notebook.

By Nicole Endres, managing editor

To find out how you can support Medical School scholarships, contact Teri McIntyre at the Minnesota Medical Foundation, 612-625-5976, 800-922-1663, or t.mcintyre@mmf.umn.edu.

Standing out from the standouts

Of the 986 students currently enrolled in the Medical School, a few dozen have chosen to pursue another advanced degree simultaneously through one of the U’s six combined degree programs.

55
M.D./Ph.D.

8
M.D./M.P.H.

2
M.D./M.S.

1
M.D./M.B.A.

1
M.D./M.H.I.*

0
M.D./J.D.

*Master’s of Health Informatics

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