This summer, I was a part of the Gilstrap summer program with UT Health in Houston, Texas. This internship was created by Wabash alumnus Dr. Sean Blackwell ’84 who is the chair of the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology for UT Health. Alongside Dr. Blackwell was
Dr. Sunbola Ashimi, who planned and organized the program for us.

Throughout this internship, I spent my time in a wide variety of subspecialties within Obstetrics and Gynecology. I was able to observe doctors working in the specialties of labor and delivery, both on day shift and night shift, minimally invasive gynecological surgery, gynecological oncology, the fetal center, along with multiple private clinics. Most of my time was spent side by side with doctors, observing from the time they got into the hospital until the time they left. Within this time, I was able to observe so many things that I had never seen before, including vaginal deliveries, cesarean sections, surgery with the Davinci robot, and so many other things. Since the hospital is connected to a medical school, the doctors were great at teaching on the fly and finding opportunities get us involved in whatever they were doing. There were many times where these doctors would go through a surgery and teach to other students and I as they went through the surgery. I was even able to scrub into a few surgeries and see everything firsthand.

During my time in this internship, I learned a lot about a functioning hospitals, as well as the process of eventually becoming a doctor. There were always so many working parts. From annuals check-ups to emergency caesarian sections, people were constantly moving around finding ways to provide the best care to these high-risk patients they were working with. The largest, and probably most important lesson that I brought back from this internship was the importance of learning. While being around the medical students and residents, along with the doctors, I could see the importance of learning. Medical students were always asking questions to residents, and residents were always learning from the attending physicians, and the attending physicians were in tons of meetings about new research and papers that they could implement to help provide the best quality of care.

This internship absolutely confirmed my passion for medicine. Every day I was able to learn something new, whether it was some new acronym that may be useful during medical school or a technique that could possibly save a baby’s life. Each and every day was filled with some sort of excitement and opportunity to learn. I would suggest this internship to anyone that
has an interest in medicine at any level, as you get to see seemingly everything in the healthcare field.

I would like to thank once again Dr. Blackwell, Dr. Ashimi, the UT Health doctors, Jill Rogers and Wabash College for helping provide this amazing experience and all that allowed me to learn and observe.