Ji Na Kim '12 - 2011 Ali Sacco '05 Internship Recipient
As the 2011 recipient of the Ali Sacco '05 Internship, Jina spent two weeks at Children's Hospital in Boston, shadowing the physicians and staff in the Cardiology Department.
"How are your kids?"
"Great! They are at summer camps right now."
"Oh, mine too! I thought it would be better for them to be out of the house, so I sent them to three summer camps."
"Three?"
"Yes, and phew! It took an hour or two to fill out all those applications. I had to get health forms for each application and describe any allergies that each kid had. But, while filling those forms, guess what my husband said to me:
'Do we really need to fill out these forms and send our kids to summer camps?'
Well, let HIM try looking after all of them through the whole summer vacation!"
Now, here is a question for you; who do you think are the speakers? You might immediately think: ordinary mothers. Well, you are partly right because they are both mothers of three children; however, would you believe it if you were told that these women are actually the best cardiologists at Children's Hospital in Boston?
The Ali Sacco Internship—crated in memory of Ali Sacco '05 who passed away in her junior year (2003) due to a heart disease —gave me a chance to follow these amazing doctors for two weeks. During those weeks, I could not help but be surprised over and over again, because I could not see any of the stereotype doctors that I had imagined. Of course, as a high school student, I really had no idea of what the real profession would be like. But in such a big hospital as the Children's Hospital in Boston, I had been certain that I would meet busy, workaholic doctors who have no time for anything but work. Who I actually met, however, was not only a caring doctor who constantly interacted with the babies and the anxious parents, but a wife, a mother of a family and a humorous colleague as well.
Each day, I followed different doctors around the hospital and observed how each contributed to the health of the patients in the cardiology department. Dr. Marshall, for example, spent much of her time in the Catheterization labs, performing operations to examine each patient's heart or carry out a procedure to repair a heart defect. Another cardiologist, Dr. Allan, regularly went on rounds at the Cardiology Intensive Care Unit to examine the patients who had had Cath operations performed, and followed up on their progress with the Fellows, nurses and the family members. Similarly, I observed how Dr. Smoot, a cardiologist with a specialty in heart transplants, spoke with patients waiting for a heart transplant and made sure that patients who had already gotten heart transplants were progressing healthily.
At first and for awhile, I could not understand anything the doctors said. In one of the medical surgical conferences, for example, they discussed about a two- or three-month-old baby boy with ASD. Showing black-and-white echocardiograms of his heart, the doctors explained how his valves must be examined for better understanding and concluded that they would have to either repair or replace his pulmonary valve. This conclusion seemed to satisfy everyone; however, I could not have been more baffled in my life and remained confused till the end of the meeting. ASD? Pulmonary valve? What and which part of the heart were they talking about? Each scan of the heart looked the same to me and even the heart seemed to have no problem at all.
However, as the days went on and each doctor helped me with the accompaniment of a heart diagram along with their explanations, everything finally clicked together. I memorized all parts of the heart, learned their functions, and even understood that ASD was a type of a heart defect, in which a hole between the upper chambers of the heart allowed for the circulation between the oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood. I learned about various operations that were done to fix such repairs, and witnessed the whole procedure in the Cath labs, becoming familiar with the ECHO scans and X-rays along the way.
At the end of the internship, I could feel an enormous difference from my first day at the hospital; from a nervous student who had not even taken a high school biology course, I had become so familiar with much knowledge about cardiology and the hospital system that I not only began to understand the patients' situation with less help, but even recognized some symptoms of heart defects, such as breathing difficulty, abnormal heart murmurs, easy fatigability and poor growth. In all, getting this scholarship has been an extremely rewarding experience for me, as it has enabled me to get a first-hand insight into what the profession of being a doctor is like, their relationship with patients and family members, and the cooperation that is needed between all the hospital staffs.
