Davis and Kibbey gain insight into the world of medicine through the National Youth Leadership Forum at Yale.
If you had asked Hannah Davis and Britton Kibbey what they wanted to do for a career as freshmen, the medical field would have been pretty far down on the Worthington Christian seniors’ lists.
In fact, it might have resided on the bottom of Kibbey’s registry of career possibilities.
“If you asked me three years ago what I wanted to do, I would have told you the only thing I knew I didn’t want to do was medicine,” Kibbey said with a laugh.
That mindset is changing. After participating in the National Youth Leadership Forum’s Medical Conference July 15-22 on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., both Davis (who is considering a career in occupational therapy) and Kibbey (who is exploring careers in dermatology) are taking a long, hard look at the medical realm.
The two were nominated by Anatomy, Chemistry, and Physiology teacher Dawn McMahon to participate in the week-long conference. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from guest speakers and gain experience researching and making presentations. Davis and Kibbey were part of one of the four groups invited to present in front of the entire forum of 120 attendees at the conference’s conclusion.
“It was a lot of fun,” Davis said. “We got a lot of hands-on opportunities (to learn the ins and outs of the medical profession).”
Their group being chosen to present their findings to the conference caught Kibbey and Davis off guard.
The conference was divided into four subgroups. Groups of four students were asked to research a topic for two hours and present their findings to the 24 students in their subgroup. Each subgroup then selected a set of presenters to speak on their topic in front of the medical showcase.
“I had no idea we would have to verbalize our ideas and what we found out in front of everyone,” said Davis, whose group chose burn recovery as their topic. “I just thought it would be group discussions, but you had to go in front of the class and then the big medical showcase. We knew everyone in our class because we were with each other all week, so that wasn’t that scary. But we didn’t have much time to prepare once we were chosen (to speak at the closing conference).”
“It was terrifying,” Kibbey said. “This was the largest group I’ve ever presented to before, but everybody was chill and were nice about it.”
Both Davis and Kibbey came into the conference with a strong medical background in their DNA. Davis’ father, Michael, is an interventional cardiologist, and her mother, Teresa, is a nurse practitioner. Kibbey’s mother, Jennifer, is a physician’s assistant for a dermatologist, and her aunt Robin is a nurse practitioner in family medicine. Both students said attending Worthington Christian, particularly McMahon’s advanced anatomy class, also helped them prepare for the conference.
“We’ve done a lot with presenting in front of classes (at Worthington Christian),” Davis said. “I was also taking a class at Columbus State in public speaking when I went to the conference, so that helped me out.”
“Mrs. McMahon completely prepared us,” Kibbey added. “Some of the stuff we did in her class was even more advanced than what we discussed in the conference. Her class was amazing. We got to go to the Ohio State University’s cadaver lab and hold human hearts and lungs in our hands, which is so cool.”
Presenting their findings in an academic setting was just part of the real-world experience Davis and Kibbey gained at the conference. During a field trip to New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine in NYC, participants had the opportunity to train in the school’s simulation center.
According to the school’s website, the Grossman School of Medicine’s simulation center aims to provide medical students with a highly realistic learning environment. Participants received the opportunity to practice with the school’s “family” of instructional mannequins representing a range of ages from infant to adult to “develop and enhance clinical skills” while building teamwork, communication, and professionalism.
Conference attendees also worked with standardized patients (SPs). These actors were paid to mimic various ailments and conditions, and the students had to diagnose and decide on a course of action to treat them.
“It was like a gigantic game of Clue,” Davis said. “They acted like they had a certain thing, and we had to examine the person and figure out what they had by asking them questions and then doing an exam on them. There were various med students at different stations to help us out.”
“It was completely a real-world situation,” Kibbey added. “With one patient, we had to test her cranial nerves, look in her ears, and check her eyesight. It was cool.”
While neither student said they were looking to attend Yale, Kibbey was blown away by the school’s dormitories.
During the conference, the students stayed at Pauli Murray College, one of Yale University’s two newest residential colleges. The facility opened in 2017 and is named after Anna Pauline “Pauli” Murray, a trailblazing lawyer, civil rights activist, writer, and Episcopal priest.
“All of the buildings there were just breathtaking. (Pauli Murray) looked like something straight out of a fantasy novel,” Kibbey said. “It looked like a giant castle with a bell tower and four or five courtyards.”
The trip to Yale also opened my eyes to the amount of schooling required for those who decide to pursue the medical profession.
“The trip gave Hannah and me a good sense of what the future will look like and how much we’re going to have to give up if we want to achieve that,” Kibbey said. “We’re going to have to put in a ton of hours. One speaker said she was in her second year of residency, and one of the people overseeing her told her, ‘You could either be 35 and be a doctor or you can just be 35.’ She added, ‘I guess it’s kind of cool (I’m going to be a doctor when I’m finished), but I’m still in school until I’m 35.’”
“(The conference) helped me narrow my choice to being an occupational therapist after seeing how much schooling goes into becoming a doctor,” Davis said. “But I like the idea of doing something good and helping people improve. As an OT, you help people recover the things they want to do. If a person used to be able to throw a football before they got injured, you help them relearn how to do that again. I feel (working directly with a patient) is more meaningful than just giving them medication.”