By Romel Edmond
It’s July – that time of the year again. Barbeques, fireworks, and new interns. The Residency Program put together a meet and greet to meet the new class amidst pizza, cake and healthy fruit snacks. Just a few days into their budding careers as pediatricians and they’ve already delivered triplets. I found them huddled among each other and jumped into the scrum to ask them a few questions:
I talked to Michael Nguyen, MD first and hit him with some existentialism in between pizza bites.
Q: When did you know you wanted to be a pediatrician?
Mike: When I first came to medical school, I had no idea. I thought I might want to do internal medicine. As it turns out, I like the thought process of the pediatrics as well as the problem set. There’s also a special culture that comes with being a pediatrician. Also, the fact that a lot of our patients get much better and if they don’t get better, there is so much support for them going forward that are funneled in. Pediatrics in general as well as the staffers are super passionate about their patients.
Q: When did you know you wanted to go into Pediatrics?
A: Katherine: Right before I started my fourth year of med school. Before med school I taught swim lessons for 7 years and I helped with high school running camps. I didn’t realize when I was in med school that the patient population I liked working with best is kids until I did my peds work and I realized the happiest doing my peds rotation.
Q: Was a desire to work with Harbor-UCLA’s underserved population a reason why you wanted to be here?
Candice: Yes. That’s a major reason I wanted to come here. The med school I worked at had a very similar patient population as Harbor-UCLA. I worked at a county hospital in Chicago. It’s just the type of patients I like – working with underserve populations. Before I started medical school I did some research on well-child care patient populations here in Los Angeles. So I had that focus from early on. So when I was selecting my future residency programs, that was a high priority for me.
Q: How has your first week been?
Shaheen: It’s been great so far. I’m enjoying working with kids. Working with patients here has been interesting and fun.