By Myshake Abdi ’16

Over the summer I was fortunate enough to spend six weeks in Cleveland, OH participating in the Summer Medical/Dental Education Program. There are multiple SMDEP sites all over the U.S. at varying dental and medical schools; the site I chose to attend was centered in the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

At home at CWRU

Over the course of six weeks I had the privilege of attending multiple lectures, ranging from different groundbreaking studies in the medical field to insight on the process of applying to med school. Aside from guest lecturers we also were required to attend class. Each student was assigned a math, writing, physics, and chemistry course, and the classes we were placed in were contingent upon the classes we had already taken during the school year. In addition to class work, every student was assigned a public health group. Over the course of the program these public health groups were responsible with finding and proposing practical solutions to public health disparities, then presenting their topics in the form of a 20 to 30 page paper as well as a power point presentation.

Myshake (3rd from right) with his public health group

However, the main experience that makes this program unique is the shadowing experience. Each SMDEP student, at the CWRU site, was given the ability to shadow 3-4 doctors in fields such as neurosurgery, plastic surgery, internal medicine, neurocritical care, and emergency care. This, in my opinion, was perhaps the one of the more useful experiences, in terms of understanding the day to day procedure of different doctors.

For more information about the program visit the page: http://smdep.org/

Or contact me at: AbdiM16@hsc.edu