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Integration with the larger picture of healthcare is also represented in the year’s content through specialized longitudinal courses. In Evidence-Based Medicine, we learn about interpreting research findings and applying them clinically. Interprofessional Education opens opportunities to listen to and shadow professionals in other career paths, including nursing, social work, and radiology technicians. In Improving Health Systems, we have received a crash course in the history of the US health system and health economics, and we have discussed reforms. Together, these courses work to form us as doctors prepared to serve in the current era: one where our scientific knowledge is greater and grows more quickly than ever before and our US healthcare system seems to only become more and more complicated and difficult to navigate with each year. Collaboration with other professionals’ strengths and other fields’ bodies of knowledge will be essential in best serving our future patients.
Between the pandemic and new movements in medical education, the first-year experience surely looks different than it has in the past. For M1s, though, it is the only way we have ever known medical school, and most
of us entered already feeling exhausted: these last two years have been filled with uncertainty and loss for everyone. Establishing yourself in a new city is not easy when there are always more lectures you should be watching, and our investments in our budding community continue to be undermined by break-through cases, our constant obligations, and the limits of our own mental health.
I keep reminding myself this is temporary. For one thing, this year is hardly the start of our medical education. Each of us has worked and studied with persistence to reach this point. Behind each of us stand hundreds of Ms. Widhelms, who have inspired, encouraged, and invested in us. This year, too, is not the way that our medical education will look next year or the years beyond—most of us will never again spend so much of our days with flashcards and so little of our days with patients. Right now, we are potential energy coiled tightly with our dreams and our communities’ dreams, and someday we will be launched into careers where
we will transfer the energy poured into us into our patients. For tha•t, despite the difficulties, I feel honored and privileged.
Webers Webers
Volume 73 • Number 43 Washtenaw County Medical Society BULLETIN 17