Shelby Peters, MS4, is a current TIP student at the Marquette Family Medicine Residency Program.
By Shelby Peters, MS4
“I can’t believe it!” exclaimed the woman sitting across the exam room from her long-time family medicine physician and me. Both of their faces were painted with beaming smiles that were contagious and made it impossible for me not to smile and share in their exuberance. This woman had just gotten the news that after months and months of working hard with her physician and a diabetes educator, she had finally achieved an A1c in the normal range for the first time in years. Moments like this are what make me excited about family medicine. Getting to experience that joy and sense of accomplishment with patients when they successfully accomplish a health goal you have been working towards with them must be so rewarding. This patient and her physician had known each other for years and had the type of strong, trusting relationship that allows this type of situation to occur. I admired the perseverance both parties had to achieve this goal, which will lead to a healthier life for this woman. I am excited to develop relationships like this with my future patients and to share in their triumphs as well as their hardships and everything in between.
Narrowing down a specialty was a challenge for me for because I couldn’t choose a patient population that I liked working with best. I enjoyed seeing patients in the later decades of life, listening to their stories and helping them navigate changes in health status and managing multiple conditions at once. Seeing pediatric patients always brought a smile to my face, and I enjoyed providing education to parents and the challenges that come with working with the pediatric population. Being present at OB visits and during deliveries was very special to me and something I can’t imagine my practice without. I finally decided that the best fit for me would be Family Medicine so that I wouldn’t have to give up any of those patient populations but would be able to care for them all.
I have had the opportunity to live in a variety of places: a rural foothills town on California with a population of 300 people, a National Park, a larger coastal city, a smaller town near the Great Smoky Mountains, the outskirts of a major city. Living in so many different areas has allowed me to experience many types of communities and has taught me a lot about myself and the type of community I want to practice in as a physician. Coming to Marquette has solidified for me that I want to practice in a rural area and be integrated into the community of the people I am serving. I had the opportunity to see what an impact healthcare can have on a rural community when I volunteered at a vaccination clinic for COVID-19. The patients from the community who came to get vaccinated were so thankful to the staff there that their health was being taken seriously and was being taken care of. This experience gave me a taste of what it would be like to provide care to a rural community that doesn’t always have the resources of bigger communities. Since I moved to Marquette, I have been impressed by how welcoming and kind the community is and their zeal for the outdoors. Exploring all the activities Marquette has to offer has been tremendously helpful in allowing me to maintain a healthy work/life balance and has helped keep me excited about having the opportunity to learn medicine and live in this beautiful place.
I am interested in the TIP scholarship with the Marquette Family Medicine Residency because it would allow me to follow my passions of forming deep patient relationships, providing education, and becoming more integrated in the community of those I serve during my fourth year of medical school. Being able to start having continuity in the residency clinic and travelling to the outlying OB clinic is one of the aspects that draws me to the program. I would like to complete my residency training at the Marquette Family Medicine Residency Program, so I feel that having the opportunity to work with the faculty, residents, and patients involved prior to starting residency would best facilitate the transition. I have been impressed by the skill and eagerness to teach of the residents and attending faculty and would love the opportunity to continue my training in the welcoming environment that the program cultivates. The unopposed nature of the program is appealing to me as well because I feel I will be able to see larger variety of patients and thus get better training to take care of such patients after residency graduation. I believe that the Marquette Family Medicine Residency is the perfect program to teach me how to be the skillful, compassionate, enthusiastic rural physician I hope to be throughout my career.
