Hannah McArthur, M4, is a new TIP student at the MyMichigan Medical Center Family Medicine Residency Program: Midland.
"My grandmother once told me about her family medicine physician whom she saw for almost 40 years, before his retirement. She told me that he delivered both of her children and then became their doctor, too. She didn’t tell me about specific medical issues he handled for her, but rather she talked about how compassionate he was and how well he listened to her. Over 40 years, it wasn’t his medication management or his diagnostics that she remembered, but rather the relationship he was able to foster with her and her family. This story struck me as one of the greatest legacies a physician can leave behind. Years later, I still believe it is the reason I want to pursue a career in primary care.
There are a multitude of reasons why I am interested in family medicine. The possibility of seeing a newborn, a 90 year old and a pregnant patient all in one day is very exciting to me. Additionally, I have always been interested in pursuing a wide breadth of knowledge, rather than specializing in one organ or one system. Family medicine requires a very vast medical knowledge in order to diagnose and manage an array of conditions, from patients with diabetes to musculoskeletal injuries to psychiatric complaints. The diversity is a large part of what makes family medicine so appealing to me. It is a specialty that requires career-long expansion and dissemination of knowledge which is fitting for me, as both lifelong learning and patient education are important values of mine.
Throughout my clerkships, I found myself loving aspects of specialities that directly relate to those values. For example, during internal medicine, one of my favorite patients was a man with abdominal abscesses who was admitted for a total of two weeks and was quite sick. During those two weeks, I rounded on him daily. He felt like my patient, not only because his hospital management was my responsibility, but because I learned about his family, his career, his passions. These little aspects that made him not a patient but an individual. During obstetrics and gynecology, I loved following up on the postpartum moms who I had followed during their sometimes days-long labors and was present for their births. I felt a connection to these patients, having been a part of their care for many days. Being able to check in on the whole family was such a privilege.
During a family medicine elective with the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, I was struck by how meaningful it is for a family medicine physician to become a part of the community. The attending I learned from did not just treat his patients but truly knew them, their roles in the community and what they value. This type of kinship between patient and physician allowed for a level of trust I have seldom seen among specialists and their patients.
These experiences have solidified my dream of becoming a family physician. The Integrated Program is an excellent opportunity for me to pursue that dream. True to its name, TIP will prepare me for residency by allowing me to become integrated with the residency I want to attend. The value in this is not just the medical knowledge I will gain, but also the relationships that will be fostered with current residents and faculty, as well as the familiarity I will gain with the health system, clinic, and staff. As a TIP student, I will be able to stay in an area I am already familiar with, where I have family and friends and a good support network. But most importantly, it will provide me with the foundation to begin creating the legacy of my own career, one that I believe a family medicine physician has a unique opportunity to nurture, much like my grandmother’s doctor did. A legacy that is centered on community, relationships and longitudinal care."
