Use of Cadavers in Undergraduate Schools

How amazing that people are donating their bodies to science when they pass away? I think it’s incredible and I think I would like to donate mine in the future. However I would prefer to have it is donated to Medical Schools. One of my coworkers took human gross anatomy as an undergraduate at Rochester Institute of Technology. Initially I was pretty upset with her because I felt like students in undergrad would not appreciate the donation to its full potential. I have done dissections in my anatomy lab of a cow eye and sheep brain. I know that people often don’t appreciate those but I’m not sure how comparable that to a human body. My coworker then told me she decided that she doesn’t want to get into the medical field anymore the semester after. Continue reading “Use of Cadavers in Undergraduate Schools”

New perspectives through music

(The songs I write about in this post use foul language and some videos are very graphic. If you do decide to listen to these songs I would recommend listening all the way through.) Earlier this semester I wrote about how important communication was to work out problems. In class we discuss literature and I have learned a lot about new perspectives though our readings. Another powerful tool people are using to discuss issues is music. One of my favorite genres of music is rap and last week a song came out called “I’m Not Racist” by Joyner Lucas. It’s a very powerful song that shows people that there are always two sides to every story. Hearing people out before making generalization is very important. Taking a second and putting yourself into someone else’s shoes could change a person’s view completely. Exposure to things that a person can’t experience in their life could be portrayed to them in music and literature. Continue reading “New perspectives through music”

Volunteer Review

While working on my earlier post about the cost of medical voluntourism I came across a review from a student who participated in the volunteering program. Her name is Rashae and she is a Nursing student. She participated in the Midwifery in Ghana. She talked about her experience and the actual placement. “As I showed initiative and effort I was taught to perform various medical assignments that included administering medications intravenously and intramuscularly, collecting vital signs, and performing vaginal exams.” As I read this my mind automatically jumped to what we talked about in class. Students performing tasks they are not qualified to do. Continue reading “Volunteer Review”

Group discussion improvement

There was a great change in the way our class tackled the second day of working on our collective course statement. I think as a class we had a better understanding of what was expected of us and we were able to build on it. Maddie had notice a similar change which she talked about in her post on how we ended up using one of the Globe learning outcomes.

The first day the task at hand seemed very confusing. Since most of us have never done anything like this, it was very much out of our comfort zone. Personally, I had a hard time figuring out if what I wanted to say was even relevant to the paragraph we were asked to come up with. For some time I was working on steps farther down the line and did not even realize it. Also the concept of one scribe was a little awkward at first since it seemed like they were doing all the work. Gathering ideas that everyone was saying and linking them together is an extremely difficult task. Towards the end of the class we all worked on the paragraph together and each of us contributed an idea of how to shape our paragraph.

The second day everything was much smoother. We now understood how to narrow down our ideas to work on the task at hand. We were no longer just spitting out ideas but also sharing experiences. It seemed more like a discussion a group of friends would have. My group even went off topic and talked about where we were from and sports. The several minutes we spent getting to know each other better, I think actually brought us closer together and more comfortable with each other. By the end of the day I was no longer worried about expressing my ideas even if they were too much off topic. It could potentially spark an idea for someone else and they can bring it back to the point we needed to make. The second day flew by and we all worked together very well.

Overall I am enjoying this project. I am excited to see how we will continue to work together and what challenges are ahead.

Cost of Volunteering

While working on our final project in class and discussing medical voluntourism my group came up with a potential reason for why people actually attempt to perform tasks they are no qualified to do. When I think of volunteering, I think of going to an animal shelter and playing with animals. I think of something that brings people joy or working for cause they believe in. Medical voluntourism is much different since it is not free. In the society we live in today, people are always on the hunt to get the best deals. A prime example is Black Friday, which is pretty much a holiday dedicated to bargain shoppers. When people pay for something they want to get their money’s worth. This could potentially cause them to perform tasks that they are not qualified to do just to get the experience for the money they paid.

This point caught my attention and I then decided to research how much medical volunteering in other countries actually costs. I found a website which offers medical volunteering placements and the prices. I looked at the Midwifery Internships Abroad program and this experience is not cheap. For a trip to somewhere like Ghana it is about $2,765 (price chart in link) not including flights and visa. This is pretty pricey; especially for a college student or even someone right out of high school. Although, on the website there is a tab called “Why pay to volunteer?” which breaks down everything the price includes. This section provides great explanations to where the money actually goes. About 51% of the cost is for the individual’s trip while the rest is to maintain the agency and run future projects.

As someone who is working to get myself through school, I would not be able to afford this program. This is why I pursued a job at Strong Memorial Hospital. My job provides me with income and patient interaction. Even if I could financially afford this program, I still don’t think I would feel comfortable helping some give birth, since just transporting a pregnant woman to an exam within the hospital without a nurse makes me anxious. I am in no way trained to assist anyone through labor.

All in all I could see how people would want to get the most out of their experience or almost feel pressured to get hands on experience in order to get their money’s worth. However, this is not something that should be allowed or even expected. Hopefully, our final course statement gives students a better understanding of what they should expect from medical voluntourism.

Communication

Sakshi has brought up an awesome point in her blog post. The whole concept of people saying “I don’t see color” is pointless. The only thing that is happening is people are avoiding the issue all together. We can all pretend that racism doesn’t exist but what good will that do? It won’t fix the issue at hand – it will just keep happening. Talking about an issue is what’s going to fix it.

I am a supplemental instructor for organic chemistry and recently I was learning the most effective ways of teaching or tutoring students. One of the worst things you can possibly do as a tutor is giving the students an answer to a practice question. It is important to talk through the question and help them reach the answer on their own. One of my favorite lines to use when someone asks me a question that I know they should be able to answer using basic knowledge of the material is “I don’t know, you tell me.” It might be annoying at first and students hate it but it makes them tell me their thought process. As we go through the thought process, we adjust it so that they could solve a similar problem in the future. So my point is avoiding talking about an issue or just saying its bad is like giving a student the answer without explaining it. They get absolutely nothing from it.

Communication is very important when it comes to analyzing and fixing a problem. Earlier this semester we read in Medical Apartheid about doctors who only communicated with like-minded people and prevented African American doctors to work in hospitals. “Until three or four decades ago, these researchers were speaking only to their like-minded peers – other whites, usually male and rarely of the lower classes.” (Washington, 10)  They also prevented communication with the world and only other doctors were able to understand the recordings. “The medical jargon in which such research papers are couched is often impenetrable even to well-educated nonmedical people.” (Washington, 12) This causes a sense of skepticism within the African American community. Doctors were no longer trusted which hurt African American health in general. There was also no one who was able to be a voice of reason for these doctors. Doctors are very intelligent but even they make poor decisions as Avery talked about in her post.

I believe communication could fix majority of the problems. The key is to be open minded and listen to the perspective of others. Every person has developed their standing on an issue based on facts and experiences they have encountered in their lives. Hearing out ideas of others could lead to middle ground solution to a problem at hand. Also talking over issues with children would build a solid foundation for dealing with major issues in their future.

Shaping children’s mind

There is always the debate about nature vs. nurture. Is a person born evil or have there been events that caused them to become evil. The one thing we do know is that children are very good at learning. If a child is constantly told they are stupid by their parent, who is pretty much guiding them through life while they still can’t reason on their own, that is what they will believe. Alice in the book Zulus by Percival Everett is constantly reminded that she is fat. Her mother died while Alice was very young and her father later committed suicide. Her grandmother blames her father’s suicide on her. “Alice Achitophel hadn’t liked her grandmother; the old woman had blamed her for son’s death, claiming that her obesity had embarrassed him and driven him to suicide.” pg. 40. Although Alice knew the real reason her father killed himself, I think it still gave her a sense of insecurity and low self-esteem. Hearing some tell me that my parent killed themselves because they were embarrassed by me would definitely destroy my self-esteem.  Also in Home by Chloe Ardelia Wofford, Frank’s sister Cee was always put down by her grandmother while her parents were away at work. “Being born in the street–or the gutter, as she usually put it–was prelude to a sinful, worthless life.” Pg 43. This constant reminder of being worthless prevented Cee from reaching her full potential. It was not until she went through a traumatizing experience and learned from the women that helped her heal, that she was able to become strong and independent.

This also got me thinking how exposing a child to racism at a young age could shape their whole future of how they look at people. I personally never had a very diverse community so I never knew about racism. However Avery replied to my first post and said the community she grew up in was very diverse but she was also never exposed to racism (Link). We grew up on totally different environments and never considered racism. “So where does this hate or though that someone is less valued based on their looks come from?” I think it is just based on what children are exposed to from a young age. Teaching a child that someone is worse than them will most likely stick with them for majority of their life. Of course maybe not their whole life, at least until they are able to reason it for themselves but even then there will be some form of bias. Just like anything that we learn wrong for the first time, it is much harder to learn it the right way the second time around.  It feels like racism almost becomes heritable. That is why proper parenting is so important. Children need to learn confidence and love for others at a young age because it will shape their whole life.

My experience with the term race

The first 10 years of my life I lived in a small town in Ukraine. Considering that everyone is white, I never learned what race really meant. I saw people of color on TV but I never put much thought into how their lives differed from mine. However, most of all, I never considered them to be inferior to me. I just considered them to be different than me but that’s as far as that thought went. I then moved to America at the age of 10 and spoke absolutely no English. I was put into an English Second Language to learn English. The diversity of people in the class was enormous. There were people from all over the world and we all looked different. You would think that there would be some sort of culture shock but there wasn’t any at all. We all got along very well and became really good friends even though we could barely speak the same language. Continue reading “My experience with the term race”