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Interviewer: You're listening to The Scope Radio. We're live at Learn Serve Lead, the AAMC. And the theme is Pathways in Academic Medicine, and Pathways can connect, they can advance, empower, transform, or inspire. And events like the AAMC really, this Learn Serve Lead conference can serve as a purpose for all of these pathways. We're going to find out from Tom Hurtado, he's the senior director of student affairs and the co-director of the RealMD program. He's brought a couple of med students here, and we're going to find out how they've used this experience to create some new pathways as they pursue their career in medicine. Tom, it's great to have you back. Why don't you go ahead and set us up?

Tom Hurtado: Great to be here Scot. I'm really excited to have Cade Solich and Alice Snelling here. They're both first-year students, and they are part of the AAMC as a leadership area that is called the Organization of Student Representatives. And they represent the University of Utah on a national level. They're also first-year students who were just freshly elected into these roles on Monday, found out, and then we flew them out here. So it's awesome to have them here, but what's especially great is that they have this new perspective. You've both been in the books and in the hustle and bustle of the first year and now you're here and you've zoomed out to the national landscape of academic medicine. What does it look like across our nation?
And the AAMC is certainly a pathway into that and a pathway for you to become leaders. And you already have these roles and I think it's exciting. So, so far in we're about a little over halfway through. What are your takeaways? Like what are you seeing? What's speaking to you in this national environment? You're looking up from your books and saying what's going on out there? So Cade, why don't you start?

Cade Solich: Yeah, thank you first of all for having me here. And I just wanted to say that this opportunity's been incredible. Like you said, it's definitely been able to help me open my eyes and take a look outside of the books. It's been really cool to rub shoulders with medical students and deans and faculty from every allopathic medical school in the country, which has been mind-blowing and a great opportunity. And I think that from being able to share space with all these people from different medical schools, it's really given me more of a perspective into kind of the similar struggles that almost every single medical student and medical school is going through right now. I know that before I came here, I felt a little bit overwhelmed with things such as step one, becoming pass fail. It seems like there's a bigger increase in the need for research in order to match into specialties.

I felt overwhelmed by changes that were being made to the match process such as adding signaling. So these were just things that I felt a little bit overwhelmed with and I know that I've talked about it within my own communities at University of Utah. But it's been really interesting to come here and see that these are conversations that are also happening on the national level. Everyone from every medical school is feeling the impacts of these changes. And what's been really inspiring for me has been to see that all of these medical schools are trying to take initiatives to help solve these on the national level as well as at their own institution.
For an example, one really cool opportunity that we got during this conference was we had a lunch with the president of the AAMC, and he was actually asking for our feedback as far as everything related to the AAMC's role in our time in medical school as well as residency and other domains that it encompasses. And it was really cool to hear how receptive they were to the feedback, they were asking for it and they were trying to be as honest and transparent as they could be. So it was a very cool opportunity and it just made me feel more motivated and inspired that I can also help to look at and try to address some of these changes and connect with other people from other medical schools who are also trying to figure out at their own institution how they can best respond to these.

Tom Hurtado: Yeah, it probably is comforting to have you realize, oh, these issues are not just issues that I'm facing in my little world as a medical student at our school. And then you're seeing that there's a national group that cares about it and now you're representing it, which is probably a wild thought that you get to take this back home.

Cade Solich: Definitely.

Tom Hurtado: Alice, let's talk to you a little bit about it as well. What has this experience done for you so far? What are you taking home?

Alice Snelling: I think I share a lot of the similar thoughts as Cade in relation to having this opportunity to engage with other medical students. And especially me growing up, I'm the first medical student in my family and so just hearing from third and fourth years about what their experiences in medical school has been, has been extremely valuable to me. And one thing that I've taken away, especially from this sort of first session that I attended, it was a hackathon with other students regarding medical education. And both my parents are elementary school teachers, so I'm really interested in sort of continuing along that path and perhaps being a future faculty member myself. And during this session we were talking about all these changes with new curriculum and the U having gone through one very recently, it was really eye-opening to me. One student shared that they're in their first year at this university of a new medical school curriculum. And so far their faculty members have not implemented a system yet for feedback.

And so hearing her talk about this really made me aware of how lucky I am to be at the University of Utah. Only a few months into school and I've already been sent to multiple surveys about different lectures that I liked and what I thought about scope. And so I feel like overall this has given me a very positive view of where the field of medicine is going because we are thinking about these issues. And I feel like the U is doing a very good job addressing those. In addition, I've heard a lot of students bring up many other issues that I'm passionate about such as food insecurity, the uncertainty of how AI is going to be incorporated into medicine, just these very big issues. And it's awesome to know that we've got really dedicated groups of both medical schools and faculty as well as students working to address these major issues that are going to impact the field of medicine going forward.

Tom Hurtado: Yeah, thanks so much. So much in there in your comments. And I almost see you just arriving here and just seeing this big landscape of opportunity and knowing in that your perspective matters at the University of Utah and that now you get a chance to represent and advocate for issues that we're all facing, which I think is so special. Have you felt a little bit of a perspective shift from this? Cade, can you relate to that?

Cade Solich: Just being here and speaking with students about their own curriculums, it's really made me appreciate the University of Utah's curriculum so much more for so many reasons. And it's really made me see that pretty much anything is possible at the University of Utah School of Medicine. That might sound a little bit cheesy, but honestly I genuinely feel that way with how much support we get and all the opportunities that are at our fingertips where it sounds that maybe other medical schools just don't have that ease of access to some of the resources that we have. So I'm very thankful for that and it's really given me the perspective that I am super thankful to be at the University of Utah School of Medicine. And not that I wasn't before, but it's just made me even more passionate about it.

Tom Hurtado: Alice, you kind of talked about perspective already, but is there something that you want our medical students to know back home after being here?

Alice Snelling: I guess now that I know a little bit more about my role, I would want students to come to me so that we can connect with other medical students. And I hope that when we go back to school, helping other students understand about our experience and that they're really not alone. That medical school across the board is challenging regardless of where you are. And there are people on a national level thinking about these problems, especially regarding match step one, even just financial accessibility of medical school at our AAMC luncheon with the CEO of the AAMC. He was very receptive and he acknowledged multiple times the financial stress and difficulties of medical students. And they're actively trying to create solutions to solve these problems.

Interviewer: Tom and Alice and Cade, I want to throw in from my perspective listening to this conversation, I think it's cool that I'm hearing, and you may or may not realize this because sometimes you don't realize it when you're in the moment. I'm hearing emerging leaders, I'm hearing people that are having discussions with colleagues at other institutions about the struggles in medical school. And you know what, that's not going to change. There's going to be struggles in residency. There's going to be struggles and challenges to solve in medicine. And you're indirectly right now just by having these conversations, you're developing connective pathways to other people. Tom, would you like to expand on that because I know leadership is your wheelhouse.

Tom Hurtado: Yeah. And I think also just taking hold of issues that we are facing and as a leader saying in the scope of what I'm here to do, I'm going to put my effort to creating change. And I think that's special feeling that there's a community of people and that the AAMC is supporting a platform, I think for you to emerge into this leadership role. And I know you'll have other roles as you continue to grow at our school. So I'm super excited and I called you as we'll kind of bookend this year when I called you and said, hey, do you want to go? It's Thursday, that kind of a thing, and we're scrambling to get your flights. I knew that what was about to happen was that you would have this great moment and experience and there's nothing better than zooming out and realizing that you have a place and that our school has a place in this national dialogue and that you're going to be a part of it both locally and nationally going forward.

So I'm obviously very proud and excited that you were able to come here and represent our school. All right, so one of the great things about being here is this idea of idea sharing. Someone might be doing something that we haven't considered doing or someone might be doing something very similar, but they're innovating in a slightly different way. And that's the beauty of being here too, is this like cross pollination of ideas that we can do and expound upon, and maybe some inspiration we can take back home. So have you seen something Cade that you're like, ah, I think we could do something like this, or I think we could enhance what we're doing?

Cade Solich: Yeah, of course. So there were actually two things that really stuck out to me in the different presentations that I went to. I took pictures of them on my phone so I remember them because I liked them so much. The first one was actually from Thomas Jefferson University. They were talking about different leadership modalities that they have, and one of them was something called a health mentors program. And I really thought it was really interesting because it's basically an interdisciplinary leadership role in which you have medical students, nursing students, social workers, physical therapy and occupational therapy students. And all them together are paired with a community member, just a patient out in the community that is dealing with some barrier to their access in healthcare. And all of them are collaborating over a longitudinal course to try to help improve that issue for them, trying to improve the healthcare system for them in that way.

So I just think that's a really cool way to do community outreach while also working on interdisciplinary teamwork. And the other one that I really liked was from NYU Grossman. They actually have a centralized system for shadowing. So basically they already have the physicians that are available to shadow in contact with the school. And the school has a central platform in which they allow students just to go onto this website and schedule shadowing. So it really takes it off from the students that have to reach out to that faculty. And it's just more of a very streamlined process of the students getting shadowing opportunities I think is really, really cool.

Tom Hurtado: Alice, why don't you tell us some things that you're taking home with you, some things you think might help our school.

Alice Snelling: One thing that I saw was during the poster session, which was phenomenal, there were just so many posters about medical education, it was really inspiring. At UT Tyler, students were looking at pictures of their childhood and sharing these adorable little photos that were also on their poster at the poster presentation. And the students were saying that this experience allowed them to feel less alone. And I think when medical students look back at how far we've come, when we look back at our childhood and those pictures of those tiny little kids that are now eventually going to become doctors, it allows us to have this compassion for ourselves that we don't always have being in this rigorous academic environment. So I think that could be a really fun opportunity to incorporate somehow. I'm not totally sure if this is already being done, but that was really inspiring to me.

There was a professor from a university in Rome, and this professor was from the university in UAE, the Khalifa University, which I had never heard of before, but she was talking about this program in which she brings in members of the community to teach her students about social determinants of health. And then these students in turn then engage with people in their local government to talk about these issues and they facilitate a two-way discussion with these community members. And so it creates this buy-in and this huge system in which community partners, government, academic institutions are all working together to address these issues in the local community. And I thought that was really awesome and I'd be curious to see what ways we could maybe incorporate that going forward into our school.

Tom Hurtado: That's great. I love the wide range of what you can take home, right? I mean, there's things that are, specific things that are happening on a global level, and it's just great to engage and have that content. So you are emerging, you're our leaders. We're so glad you came out here and it's just been a pleasure to talk about all this stuff today, and I can't wait to see what you're going to keep doing as you keep going forward.

Alice Snelling: Well, thank you so much. It really means a lot. I'm so excited to be here and work with you all and see what we can do going forward.

Cade Solich: And I also want to give a big thank you to our classmates who helped to vote us into this position. It's already been an honor and I'm very excited to see what we can do to help move the conversation forward on all these different fronts. So thank you again.