“Working urgent care is like a garbage can; you gotta know a little about everything and it all sucks.” These are the words of Elizabeth Steinberg, the physician’s assistant I shadowed this past winter break as a part of my Science and Global Change Practicum. Going to urgent care is never fun, and even the physicians know this. That’s why people like Elizabeth Steinberg do what they can to ensure a safe, efficient, and helpful visit. Whether people are coming in to get stitched up from a work injury, to get a pre-op evaluation, or even just coming in for flu-like symptoms, there are all kinds of things a physician's assistant has to be prepared to diagnose and treat. On top of all that, they spend their time delegating tasks to medical assistants, managing the patient board, and filling out paperwork for every patient. My time at FirstCall gave me a lot of insight into the medical field and the medical devices used to diagnose people. That’s why as a bioengineer I was so fortunate to be working with Mrs. Steinberg because I got a lot out of the experience and have been able to apply my real-world experience with my own undergraduate education.
My practicum site was FirstCall Medical Center - Maple Lawn. It’s located at 10981 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD. Their mission statement is about making communities a healthier place by improving access to healthcare while simultaneously lowering healthcare costs. As an urgent care facility, as mentioned before, they mainly treat non-life-threatening illnesses and injuries. They serve as a quicker cost-effective alternative to the emergency room for acute symptoms. Here, I shadowed Elizabeth Steinberg who works as a physician’s assistant, which is one of the types of providers that FirstCall hires to take care of patients. I was able to find her and reach out to her because my father had previously worked with her as an x-ray tech before he switched locations. He gave me her contact information and I sent her a professional email asking if she’d be willing to take on a shadow. Lucky for me, she and her coworkers love taking on shadows throughout the year so she was more than willing to have me at FirstCall. For the first few weeks I actually worked with another student who was also shadowing, so I knew the providers at FirstCall were no stranger to having shadow assistants around.
This actually goes for a lot of medical professionals. With so many medical students needing clinical hours, most doctors, practitioners, and physician’s assistants would love to bring someone else on with them. My advice is just start cold emailing people at nearby urgent cares and doctors offices. They are used to it and the worst they can do is say no. Another piece of advice is just ask any adults in your life if they can think of anything. Aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, this is the network you were born with and if you don’t have anyone else, this is a great place to start. Someone in your family probably has an idea of an opportunity or someone with an opportunity. It’s an easy place to start looking for your own practicum projects.
Now, my time at FirstCall was mainly spent following the physician’s assistant around to analyze clinical workflow and patient management. This included work with managing the patient board and the process of determining treatment and antibiotic options while understanding bedside manner and helping with vital sign collection. Another major thing I did was research and understand medical device function and use to present to Mrs. Steinberg. Being a bioengineer, I have an interest in biomedical instrumentation, so working to understand the devices used in urgent care was fascinating. Not only was it interesting to me, but I was able to help her and her coworkers understand how the SmartHeart ECG or Urispec Plus Urinalysis Analyzer actually worked and why sometimes they would be inaccurate. I was able to facilitate learning within the facility so that the employees there could better understand the devices they were using and improve accuracy and efficiency in patient diagnosis.
When it comes to what I learned about science, it mainly boils down to how important it is for people to learn about the different tools they are using in their everyday life. Science should be something accessible to everyone and the tools we use everyday. Whether medical devices or not, these tools have so much science behind them and understanding how they work even on a surface-level can aid in their efficiency and use. So overall, there is an element of science and research behind every tool and it’s important to understand their function.
Also, this practicum helped me understand things past just the science perspective. It showed me a connection between medical science and social science. Providers like Mrs. Steinberg have to work through biases and look at things critically with psychological or sociological perspectives. People come in with their own beliefs on medicine and as someone trained to give medical advice, providers have to be able to break down treatment options in an understandable way, which can be very different for different kinds of people. Some people are understandably more anxious about illnesses and providers have to work around that and help patients regardless. Understanding patients' background and bias isn’t necessarily a physical science, but it’s just as important as diagnosis so that patients walk away feeling confident about their medical care.
In the end, this practicum has taught me a lot and even informed my future. Of course, it only served to strengthen my interest in biomedical device manufacturing. Because of the practicum, I feel more than confident that my future career lies in this exact field. As for my undergraduate degree, this experience has shown me that I want to incorporate more classes related to clinical applications into my degree. The bioengineering program offers some classes on clinical applications of bioengineering as well as engineering design for global health. These classes seem to relate well to my practicum and seem like something that could add a lot of value to my degree. Overall, this project taught me the importance of understanding patient needs as well as the importance of a scientific understanding of medical devices so that the world can be a safer and healthier place.