Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA
I have wanted to be a pediatrician since I was sixteen years old. Throughout volunteer experiences in both high school and Williams I realized that I am happiest and most comfortable when I am around children. It is uplifting to bask in their energy and to be part of their complex journey into adulthood. It is joyful to be around those that want to smile and ask questions for the sake of asking questions. Therefore, my internship experience at Boston Children’s Hospital was an excellent fit for me. The experience was all the more special because it was spearheaded by a Williams alumnus, Dr. Molly Lewen ’08, who is currently a resident at Boston Children’s. She was my primary mentor this summer and it was reassuring to have conversations with her about Williams, taking time off from school after graduation, and applying to medical school. My academic background is not exactly conventional for an aspiring doctor, though this outlook has certainly changed in the past years. I am an English major because I love literature and theater, but I hope to pursue medicine as a career. Molly was an English and Psychology major and did not pursue the pre-medical track at Williams. Rather, she completed the requirements after graduation. As supportive as Williams is of their students, in the midst of lectures and exams I sometimes feel like it is easy to falsely imagine a “correct” career path. I really appreciated the open mindedness that Boston Children’s Hospital gifted me.
My internship consisted of clinical research in the cardiology department, shadowing doctors across different fields, and attending medical lectures and seminars. My clinical research project was centered on data from patients who have been on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), which acts as an artificial heart and lungs for critically ill patients. ECMO often serves as a last resort for patients in dire health conditions. As a result, mortality rates on ECMO are relatively high, partly due to adverse events such as bleeding and clotting. In the past seven years, Boston Children’s has attempted to formulate a bleeding management plan in order to standardize care on ECMO. The field is especially fascinating because there is no standardization across different hospitals in the nation. The number of patients in this study exceeds that of any other previous study on ECMO management. It was very exciting to be part of such a project because its results could alter mortality rates across many hospitals. Many sub-projects have come out of this larger study, such as investigations on the efficacy of different blood thinners. My role included data input, collection, and management. I also submitted a project proposal regarding the study on blood thinners. In addition, I was able to go to the cardiac intensive care unit (CICU) to learn about the ECMO circuits and meet some of the patients who form part of the study. In this way, I was able to understand many of the aspects that make up clinical research. I also learned about the difficulties of research, especially in standardizing and organizing data collection. I found myself deeply involved in the project and am planning to continue to help throughout the next semester.
The medical lectures I attended were also engaging. Some of them were especially designed for interns and research assistants. We talked about subjects from heart transplants to clinical statistics. I enjoyed the environment in the hospital because everyone who works there was very open to teaching. This is probably because it is a teaching hospital, but I certainly felt that the eagerness of the professionals I met went above and beyond anything I had ever seen before. They encouraged us to contact them with any questions or interest in their projects. It was also refreshing to be surrounded by the amount of young people working as research assistants in the hospital. The supervisors made sure that a sense of community was created, to the point that I had lunch with my principal investigator a couple of times. After the summer ended, I was told by many doctors to contact them if I ever needed advice or references, which was greatly appreciated.
The shadowing component of my internship was one of my favorites. It was eye opening to observe Boston Children’s intensive care unit (ICU), as I spent my last summer in a public, Chilean ICU. The differences in infrastructure and resources were stark. It was also interesting to see how the ICU staff knew the patients closely and managed the specialists that were coming in and out to see patients. Boston Children’s is special because it is the best children’s hospital in the region. Therefore, many patients came from far beyond the Boston area. I saw many pathologies I had not even heard of in the Chilean ICU, which primarily dealt with serious pneumonia and viral diseases. At Boston Children’s, there were babies whose breathing airways had been obstructed in utero and even a child who had mysterious seizures. The latter case showed me the importance of an integrated hospital. The child started out in the ICU and the case was so unheard of that it was taken to grand neurological rounds. I was very lucky to be able to follow the case that day. I also observed many procedures in the cardiac catheterization lab and was able to see the children before and after their invasive procedures. I was really able to grasp the diversity of cardiac problems and the ways in which some are very manageable, especially from childhood. Conversely, I met children who couldn’t be sure if they were going to live five or ten more years. My favorite shadowing occurred in different clinics. I went to cardiology clinic with another Williams alumnus, Dr. David Brown ’89 and I saw the close connection he had with families. I met many children with single ventricle physiology, something I didn’t even know existed. I learned that Boston Children’s is the only hospital in the world that offers fetal surgery that can potentially prevent a child from being born with such physiology. Every day I was in awe of the medicine that happened around me and I don’t mean it in a purely scientific sense. One day, I went to a young parent’s clinic with a resident. She had taken care of both the young parent, an eighteen-year-old girl, and her baby son. That day was her birthday and the doctor explained that the girl did not have any family support and that she lived in a shelter. The entire office put their heads together to find her balloons and a gift. I went to buy her cake pops at Starbucks. We surprised her with these gifts and I could tell she was moved, but also not quite sure about how to respond. I was so humbled to be part of that moment. It was the hugs, the knowledge of personal history, and nods to familiar faces that draw me so much to medicine. As many hours as these doctors work, all of them affirmed that the truly love what they do. I cannot wait to share the feeling.
I am so thankful to the Kraft Family and the Williams College ’68 Center for Career Exploration for giving me the ASIP grant. Otherwise, I would not have been able to participate in such a fulfilling opportunity. It has reaffirmed my drive to become a physician and it opened up a world of medicine that I didn’t even know existed. I absolutely loved being part of the profoundly human moments that make up medical practice. This internship has proven to be pivotal in my college career.