<p>Hey guys, new here, hoping this is the right forum to post.</p>
<p>Here's some background about me.
In my sophomore year of high school I decided I wanted to be a doctor, a psychiatrist to be exact. My school offered a "medical careers" program that we had to test into. I was one of the top students. Each week we worked as medical assistants at the hospital for about 10 hours a week. Some parts I liked, others I didn't. I also had a great interest in biology. I didn't find it difficult at all, and it's still one of the only subjects that I really enjoy learning.</p>
<p>I decided to make a back up plan for my journey to become a doctor. I decided on computer science because it seemed reliable. The field is getting strong and the pay is decent. I also thought I could acquire some skills to create websites that I have been wanting to build.<br>
After really going through and trying to make a plan, I found that taking pre-med classes and CS classes was just going to be too difficult, so I went solely with CS mid freshman year. </p>
<p>I am now in my first semester as a sophomore and after taking calculus and realizing math and this career itself is just not for me, I have decided to change my major to something science related and go back on track to becoming a medical doctor. So far, I have not joined a single club or have done any ECs through my school. I attend a local University in Michigan that really has little to offer to my interests. I currently hold 3.5 gpa and have taken mainly general credits. I also own my own business selling a fitness product that I have invented that trains the respiratory system to increase endurance and improve breathing habits (no patent yet). I spent all of my freshman year working on the business and finally opened in later summer of this year.</p>
<p>I am transferring to Arizona State next semester, and I do look forward to joining clubs and finding a job at the hospital. I know research and shadowing is good to have, but I have not taken enough science classes yet. </p>
<p>Does anyone have experience switching majors to get into Medicine. What did you do succeed and how is it? Any advice?</p>
<p>My parents split when I was 15. My dad lives in Arizona so I will get in state tuition and I really love the campus.</p>
<p>I’m taking Calculus right now. I have done a semester of General Bio and a semester of psychology. The rest I have taken were general credits (arts, history, humanities, etc.) </p>
<p>I will apply to med school more than likely within or after senior year depending on how well I feel prepared.</p>
<p>"I will apply to med school more than likely within or after senior year depending on how well I feel prepared. "
-I believe that you meant your MCAT score / college GPA. Other than that do not expect to be prepared for Med. School. That is the reason, why Med. Schools do not care much about major. You cannot be prepared for it. All you can show is your willingness to work very hard which would be reflected in your college GPA/MCAT score.</p>
<p>Protect your residency in Arizona now that you’ve got it! Your best chance for admission to any medical school is to your in-state options - some state medical schools admit virtually no one who is not a state resident and I think Arizona may be one of them. In-state options are also half the price of most oos and private medical schools and the quality is usually about the same across the board unless you are looking to go into academic medicine. Finally, “since many of the patients who receive care at UA-affiliated teaching clinics and hospitals speak Spanish as their primary language, it is useful for UA students to be conversant in Spanish.”</p>
<p>FYI, the Spanish used by physicians and medical personnel is different from the Spanish you will learn in college. What you want is medical Spanish.</p>
<p>You should know, however, there is controversy in the medical community about who and how non-English primary speakers should be addressed. According to all the ethics courses D1 has had at med school, only certified medical translators should present medical information to patients (not non-native speaking doctors, not family members) because there are so many varieties of Spanish in the US (Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Central American. South American, European) and all of them have their own vocabulary variants, pronunciations and slangs. It’s too easy to make translation errors.</p>
<p>D1’s BF is a native Spanish speaker. It’s his first language and the language he speaks at home. He’s also a paramedic–and even he doesn’t have the correct vocabulary for medical terminology. </p>
<p>That said, D1 wishes her conversational Spanish were better. She often works at free eye clinics where 75% of her patients are Spanish speakers and she wishes she could to be able to, as she puts, warn them she’s about to “poke them in the eye” to check for glaucoma.</p>
<p>Interesting as D1 has been translating at low income clinics since HS and throughout college. She hasn’t taken a medical Spanish course. I know that she has translated between physicians and patients, but perhaps it has mostly concentrated on the patient’s side rather than relating medical information, I’ll have to ask her.</p>
<p>I don’t understand your post. You say “med Spanish” is different, and that even your D1’s BF, a native speaker doesn’t have the vocabulary. Well, then what’s the point? Who are they going to talk to with the “Medical Spanish”? Only others who have been taught the vocabulary? Certainly not typical patients in the ER since they would only know as much as your D’s friend.</p>
<p>I also don’t understand your reference to “many varieties of Spanish”. That has not been my experience. The differences are minor, and can be easily overcome by just rephrasing. Qu</p>
<p>Exactly. It would seem to me it is much more important for a patient to be able to translate to a doctor that he is ‘hot and has been throwing up with a major pain in lower right side of the stomach’, than for the doctor to be able give the scientific terminology for a possible appendicitis. It just won’t matter if the translator knows the Spanish term for ‘hematoma’ because I can bet you that most patients haven’t the faintest idea what that means, in any language.</p>
<p>Have you read The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down?</p>
<p>If you haven’t, maybe you should.</p>
<p>This book formed the central theme of D1’s med ethics coursework during her first year. It’s main point is that medical information needs to be conveyed fluently and accurately in the patient’s native language and conveyed with cultural sensitivity and an awareness of the different value systems different cultures hold.</p>
<p>They also had numerous patient advocates and medical translators come address this issue their classes.</p>
<p>Over and over again, the students were warned against making cultural assumptions and also assuming that because they took 4 (or 6 or 10) years of any language in college that they are fluent speakers who understand the cultural nuances of a language. </p>
<p>(During their ethics practicum this fall, students were given standardized patients and asked to deal with a situations ranging from Hispanic grandma with a colicky baby [and a suspicious Anglo DIL], to 17 yo college student with gastris and a probable closeted alcoholic, to a 40 yo AA man newly diagnosed with diabetes, to a recent immigrant Asian woman who sought medical help for having been cursed by an evil eye, to a gay couple seeking IVF with a surrogate, to 19 yo pregnant woman who is asking for a Schedule III prescription renewal for the 4th time in 3 months.)</p>
<p>D1’s BF can certainly tell a patient that he/she has a broken arm, but he cannot explain what kind of fracture it is (i.e. greenstick fracture of the humerus) or why that particular kind of fracture is a hallmark of child abuse. He cannot explain to a patient how an implantable defibrilllator works except in the vaguest of terms. He can tell a patient she is HIV positive, but not how the medications for HIV work. He has big holes in his technical vocabulary. Mostly because the kind of terms he needs to explain these things are not part of most household conversations for kids growing up. Nor are they covered in most college language classes.</p>
<p>I do not know if it is of any help, but my D. (not a naitive speaker at all, only one semester of college Spanish) has been able to speak after that one semester because she took third year college Spanish. In addition to that, she has been taking Medical Spanish while at Medical School (outside of Med. School program). She was on a trip abroad after her first year at Med. School. She went with the group of physicians and other Medical Students including MS3-4’s to poor localities and was working at clinics there, which was a very good experience. I understand that she was expected to translate for MD’s in cases it was needed. She talked a lot with patients also. I have never asked her which Spanish was useful on her trip or maybe it was a combo of regular and Medical. She did not mention that Spanish was a challenge on a trip either, but she felt that she has improved it. The trip was 4 weeks long and had more applicants at D’s school than they had spots. She does not know why she was chosen, but I imagine that Spanish was one of the criteria.</p>
<p>Dunno what this has to do with ethics; to me, it is just plain old common sense. </p>
<p>But the practical reality is that no hospital, outside of Harvard, has the money to train and staff the hundreds of translators that will be required 24/7 to fulfill this [ethical?] obligation. And, add on top of that, expecting the provider to know the “nuances” of the languages that boys in the hood use is just plain silly, IMO.</p>
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<p>Do they work nights? Weekends? Holidays? Or, was this lecture/practicum given during a day class? </p>
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<p>Well Doh! (as Home would say). Do the advocates really believe that the med students are that dense that they don’t get it the first time, or second time, or…?</p>
<p>I concur that having a foreign language medical terminology is a HUGE plus. But not sure how practical it is in every ER in the country, 24/7. </p>
<p>Absent medical terminology, some language ability is better than none, IMO.</p>
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<p>Perhaps not, but the opposite is also true. Being a encyclopedia of foreign medical terms will not help the provider understand the basics either. And it is the basics that form the cultural assumptions, not a defib.</p>
<p>When medical translators are not available at my school’s hospital, we use a translator phone service. We dial a number, tell them what language we want, and then a person translates over the phone. Obviously not as good as an in person translator (the use of which we get tested on as 2nd years) but if we can’t do it ourselves, it’s better than using a random person on the floor or a relative.</p>
<p>There have been a few highly publicized incidents of medical interpretation gone wrong, one being the 1980 case of Willie Ramirez, a Spanish-speaking teenager from southern Florida. Ramirez reported feeling dizzy and having a headache—the result of an intracerebellar hemorrhage—to doctors at an area hospital.</p>
<p>However, because, among other reasons, he and his family insisted he was intoxicado, his original ailment was diagnosed as an intentional drug overdose. The word intoxicado in Spanish, however, can mean feeling dizzy or nauseous. Ramirez became a quadriplegic as the result of the misdiagnosis.</p>
<p>^We have Blue Phones too, but they seem pretty cumbersome. Clearly, trained translators there in person are the best option. We also have a bunch of signs and posters around that say in a variety (50+?) languages “Point to your language and we will get you a translator” (this sentence is written in each of the languages, and the English word for those languages is printed next to each one). Allegedly they’re helpful when patients come in and no one knows what language they’re speaking (doesn’t happen very frequently). </p>
<p>Spirit is a great book. Terribly sad, in my opinion, but a great message nonetheless.</p>