Building Community Relationships Through RVU-SU’s EAC
Donna Milavetz, MD, MPH, FACP, joined RVU-SU’s Executive Advisory Council (EAC) in 2017. In that time, she has supported the Council’s efforts in integrating RVU-SU into the Ivins, Utah community, most notably by providing a diverse voice at the Council’s table. In our interview with Dr. Milavetz, she talks about her work with the EAC, what inspired her to become a physician, and her mission of improving health outcomes in the U.S. through her leadership role at Steward Health. What prompted you to join RVU-SU’s EAC in 2017? "[It’s] important for physicians in the community to give back. I think having that relationship between a community physician who is actually practicing and the medical students... is a really important part of the medical education experience. For those reasons, I thought it would be important to be a voice in that conversation. "I also think that as a female physician and [leader], it’s important to model a spectrum of possibilities – not only for women but for anyone – in terms of my circuitous career path: what I thought as a medical student versus what I’m actually doing today." What does the RVU-SU EAC do and/or what is it tasked with doing? "The mission of RVU-SU’s EAC is to have an advisory board for leadership at the medical school and for community relations in Ivins and the greater St. George communities. The Young Doctors program, a project that the EAC raised and operationalized, was two-fold. [The EAC] had to be thoughtful on how to craft it, so we provided input as to what age group to start it at. It was intentional from the EAC as to the age group that we started it at because with kids, once they hit late middle school and definitely high school, there are more biases on education in STEM studies, especially with girls who tend to fall off the curve. [The EAC] really wanted to make sure that we were reaching students at a much more impressionable age to show the possibility of what could be." Visit the RVU Blog to read the rest of the interview
Bilingual Students Help Improve Patient Skills
In Colorado, the Global Medicine Track held a standardized patient event, "Working with an Interpreter," in which students practiced treating a non-English-speaking patient. The goal was to give the track students experience in conducting a visit with a patient who speaks a language foreign to them. The patients were made up of bilingual RVU students: David Burns, OMS II, and Hojin Seo, OMS I, spoke Korean; Tara Talebi-Talghian, OMS I, and Vahid Mashhouri, OMS II, spoke Farsi; Danielle Genov, OMS II, spoke Russian. Additionally, several parents of RVU students volunteered: Sanjay and Swati Dixit—parents of Shivani Dixit, OMS II, spoke Hindi; and, Nalini and Madhav Nunna—parents of Nitya Nunna, OMS II—spoke Telugu.
For each standardized patient encounter, one volunteer acted as the patient and the other acted as the interpreter. The student doctor did not know the patient’s complaint ahead of time nor did they know what language their patient would be speaking. The students had minutes to conduct a history and physical, making appropriate use of the interpreter to work up the case. When working with an interpreter, the student physician was expected to establish a rapport with the patient through the interpreter, while staying focused on the patient. Three RVU students— Stacy Forbes, OMS IV, Simulation Fellow; Hannah Chong, OMS IV, Simulation Fellow; and, Sara Linza-Moscati, OMS IV—with prior experience with this activity volunteered to be observers. They had a briefing of the cases, vitals to supply if the student doctor requested it, and a checklist to note whether or not the student doctor completed the expected tasks and exhibited the appropriate behaviors in the encounter.
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