Blog Archives

Health, Science and Social Justice Independent Major

Quote

Posted on by

Hey Yall!

Welcome back to Amina’s Fli Experience, a blog dedicated to detailing the life of a First-Generation Low Income Pre-med student at Bryn Mawr. In this blog post I’m going to talk about the process for declaring an independent major and my experience declaring. 

Any student from the Bi-Co may declare an independent major if the current majors offered do not satiate their intellectual curiosity and career goals. An independent major is a structured plan of study consisting of a mixture of introductory and higher level courses in a field within the liberal arts. That’s the beauty of attending a liberal arts institution

We are exposed to a wide range of classes in different disciplines that will prepare us to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. Students in a liberal arts institution recognize that college isn’t just a means to an end to secure a job but rather to develop a strong sense of social responsibility as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills, such as communication, analytical, and problem-solving abilities, and a demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skills in real-world settings. Even still, our list of offered majors is limited and if you are thinking about declaring an independent major I would love to have a conversation with you about what it entails and if it’s right for you. 

You must reach out to 2 major advisors including a thesis advisor, and then submit a major plan proposal to the governing committee who then evaluates the proposal based on feasibility and preparedness. 

Admittedly, the process may be fraught with added delays as your major advisors will send copy edits and revisions. I went to a total of 5 drafts before developing a comprehensive proposal to submit to the affiliated dean, Dean Mancini.  Below is a link to the Bryn Mawr College website that details the necessary application materials and deadlines.

Declaring an Independent Major

As a FGLI student on the Pre-med track I am deeply interested in the intersection of medicine and social justice. I have curated a “Health, Science, and Society” major that will allow me to develop the critical thinking and analysis skills necessary to confront the social determinants of health, develop a more comprehensive understanding of physical and mental health, and better understand the concerns of patients from different backgrounds including but not limited to race, class, sexuality, ability, etc.  

Medicine is both a natural and a social science and the common denominator between the two spheres is the attempt to gain a deeper understanding of humanity’s condition. It is not simply comprehension of physiology and epidemiology or simply interpersonal physician skills. Rather, it is a combination of the latter and the former that result in the amalgamation of treating the “whole person.” I have decided to design this major to examine ideas of identity, sexuality, and collective health along with forging an understanding of cellular and chemical mechanisms of life.

While the obvious choice would be for me to fulfill the requirements for a biology major, taking biology classes alone does not satiate my intellectual curiosity nor enable me to tackle the more complex questions facing physicians, including what role they should play in society, politics, and promotion of social justice. My passion for health care transcends the life sciences and instead permeates into aspects of health care such as global health, community health, addiction. One of the reasons I applied to a liberal arts institution and ultimately Bryn Mawr College was because of my awareness that a liberal education is an essential complement to the much more narrow graduate medical school curriculum. While medical schools offer cursory instruction in ethics, leadership, and health policy, there is little time dedicated to the deeper social science constructs and social processes that are needed to understand patients’ lived experience. 

It is not good enough for a doctor to simply know the appropriate medication to prescribe or diagnostic test to order. Physicians must also fully understand how social constructs such as class, gender, and race mold their medical decisions and how, in turn, patients experience their care. Dedicating my undergraduate years to this interdisciplinary study of Health, Science, and Society will offer a unique experience that will offer insight into individual differences and enrich my diagnostic and interpersonal skills.

I outline below the courses I plan on taking and the timeline along which I will complete these courses. I am positive that through this personalized major plan, I will become more knowledgeable about the upstream factors that influence community health, particularly poverty, housing, work and unemployment, social exclusion, food security, transportation, and access to health and social services.

The purpose of this major is to best prepare myself to be a highly capable physician. While I was originally planning on becoming an OBGYN I am now also considering family medicine in underserved communities and am thinking about the possibility of sub-specializing in addiction medicine. The independent major in Health, Science, and Society will equip me with important social science constructs, critical-analytical skills, and a unique perspective that will empower me to excel and lead in this important area of medicine.

If you’d like to see more specifics about the breakdown of my classes keep reading!

Courses I am Currently Taking

  1. PSYC B218 Behavioral Neuroscience 
  2. ANTHH273 Law and Anthropology: The war on Drugs
  3. ANTHH265 Medical Anthropology 

Courses I am Planning to Take

  1. BIOL B150 Human Anatomy
  2. EDUC B240 Qualitative Research
  3. HLTH H206 Health and Medicine in Modern American History
  4. PSYC B395 Psychopharmacology
  5. BIOL B352 Immunology
  6. SOCL B326 Feminist Perspectives on Health
  7. HLTH 226 Radical Medicine 
  8. HLTH H498. Senior Thesis Seminar: Supervised Research and Writing )
  9. HIST B337 Topics in African History: Cities, Epidemics, Pandemics
  10. HLTH H304 Critical Disability Studies: Theory and Practice
  11. PEAC H201 Applied Ethics of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights
  12. CHEM B377 Biochemistry
  13. HIST B210 Issues in Comparative & Transnational History: Opioids: A Global History

So You Wanna Be an EMT?

Quote

Posted on by

Hey Y’all,  

Welcome back to Aminas Fli experience, a blog dedicated to detailing the life of a First-Generation Low Income Pre-med student at Bryn Mawr. 

In this week’s blog I’m going to break down my experience taking an accredited EMS course and then studying for and going on to pass the NREMT exam. 

First, let’s get the terminology out of the way! EMT stands for Emergency Medical Technician. I like to think of there to be 3 levels of emergency care that can be provided to patients. 

  1. First responder
  2. EMT
  3. Paramedic

A First Responder is usually a police officer or firefighter. First responders have a rudimentary basis of medical knowledge and paramedics have the most advanced pre-hospital basis of medical knowledge. EMT’s are most common and are essentially the middle-of-the-road emergency medical providers who are trained in various skills and the full operations of an ambulance.

Spring of my Sophomore year, I enrolled in a course at Villanova entitled Twin Valley EMT. This course was a semester-long class that met for 12+ hours every Saturday. The teaching method of the course was “flipped classroom.” Throughout the course of the semester, we learned about the medications, anatomy physiology, epidemiology, infectious diseases, and EMT plan of care, and we did this on our own through a textbook. Then, we would come to class to review the topics and at the end of the class period we would take an exam to ensure mastery of the subject. Throughout the day, we would implement the psychomotor portion of the class. We practiced applying c-collars, long-boarding, CPR, administering medications, taking vital signs, taking a patient history, giving high flow oxygen via a Non-rebreather mask and documenting the History of Present Illness.

Undoubtedly, you will be expected to learn and retain a lot of practical and useful medical knowledge. After all we are being trained as emergency personal working for an ambulance service and responding to all sorts of medical problems. You will be hit with neurological injuries as well as cardiovascular, respiratory, G.I., endocrine systems and so on and so forth. Knowing the basic functioning of these systems will form an indispensable foundation for the rest of your medical knowledge to build off of.

I’m going to be honest, taking a full STEM course-load and an EMT course will require discipline and dedication, but I cannot overstate the benefits of such an opportunity. 

Being an EMT volunteer gives you an insight into pre-hospital care that is so invaluable to your future medical occupation. You have the rare and precious chance to perform patient care at the provider level. This means that YOU are the primary person responsible for the patient’s medical care. I know for me that sounded really daunting at first, but you will be trained to handle any scenario and you always have a senior partner riding along that assists every step of the way. All in all being an EMT grants you valuable clinical hours and it’s an extracurricular that will boost your application and provide you with an unmatched level of patient care experience. I don’t know about you guys but when I think of the ‘stereotypical pre-med’, I think of a nose to the books socially awkward control freak. Now I’m not saying I’m an extremely communicative anomaly from the premed cliche, but I definitely do think that through my carefully curated list of activities I’ve managed to develop healthy communication and interpersonal skills. 

After all, becoming an effective physician involves more than diagnosing and treating diseases. Medicine by nature is a profession that requires effective communication with patients and coworkers to achieve transformative care, and that’s what being an EMT can provide you. A lot of being an EMT is centered around patient care and history taking. 

When someone is in an ambulance they are first and foremost feeling scared and vulnerable. Extracting salient medical information from them while simultaneously digging deep into the vast medical knowledge you’ve generated is a skill that doesn’t hurt to learn early on.

My mentor told me that being an EMT, or any medical personnel for that matter, involves putting on your Sherlock Holmes Hat and really tapping into your keen observation, science, logic, and deduction skills to put the pieces of a puzzle together and solve what sometimes is ‘a medical mystery.’

So… How do I even become an EMT?

Well, first you need to take an accredited course and pass the cognitive practical exams. You can take the same path I did and attend Twin Valley EMT course at Villanova University. Or you can opt to take an EMT course over the summer with a community college. This is the safer bet in my opinion as it allows you the full breadth of summer to consummate the cognitive and psychomotor portions of the class. 

A picture of my badge and license

Where can I work as an EMT?

Hooray! You’ve successfully completed the cognitive and psychomotor exams and are officially considered a nationally registered EMT. We don’t want that certification lying around collecting dust so Let’s put it to good use. You can start by reaching out to Narberth ambulance at a local firehouse and express your interest to become a volunteer. If you are a Bryn Mawr student you can also volunteer with Bryn Mawr EMS and run calls with Campus Safety. 

The great part about being an EMT is that a lot of medical students even keep up their certification and continue working or volunteering throughout medical school.

Being an EMT isn’t for everyone, but if it sounds interesting to you, I encourage you to research more and reach out to me if you have any questions.