A Philmont Experience

John Price, M4, Class of 2020

The night was young when the radio crackled to life.  We couldn’t believe our luck. They told us the search and rescue missions wouldn’t start for another week, but here we had someone that couldn’t continue their hike. Eager to test our skills, we quickly gathered our supplies into the truck ambulance.  When I look back on all my clinical experiences, the Philmont rotation outside of Cimarron, New Mexico, is certainly my favorite. Established in 1938 as Philturn Rocky Mountain Scout Camp, Philmont Scout Ranch has become a center for high adventure and training.1  For emergency medical technician students and medical students like me, this site offers a unique clinical training in wilderness and prehospital medicine high up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of the Rockies.1  Below the peaks in basecamp, the Philmont Infirmary is the central hub for this medical four-week sub-internship rotation, and it all began on my first night.

  

Medicaid Extension- Not Expansion- is the Key to Decreasing Maternal Mortality in the United States

Hebron Kelecha, Class of 2021

The United States is the only industrialized nation with a rising maternal mortality rate. These rates are not equally distributed, with Black and American Indian/Alaska Native women being 2-3 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than White women. These alarming rates are not limited to those with lower socioeconomic status but transcend both class and educational level. A study in New York City showed Black women with a college education are more likely to experience life-threatening complications during delivery than a White woman who did not complete high school. 

Hot Take: Health Care Copays are Placing Our Inmates at Risk

Hebron Kelecha – Class of 2021

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Imagine you work in the kitchen of a correctional facility and your copay for a doctors’ visit costs $5. However, you make a whopping 33 cents an hour.

That is the reality faced by many who are incarcerated in prisons throughout the United States. It is not surprising that most of our prison population is poor when they enter the prison system. Couple this with jobs that pay less than a dollar an hour and fees for accessing health care, and we are laying the foundation for negative health outcomes.

The Refocused Health Policy Sandstorm

Kate Dixon, M1, Class of 2023

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The world of health policy has been consumed with the concern of drug prices – just absolutely and utterly offended by the list price of brand name drugs. How could you not be? When you have drugs like Zolgensma – a brand new drug approved to treat spinal muscular atrophy – running $2.1 million for a single treatment course, it’s pretty easy to throw blame at Big Pharma for the egregious state of the United States’ health care spending. However, when you zoom out and compare drug spending to other expenditures in the vast and complex world of US health care, it becomes pretty clear where the true financial abuse is present – Big Name Hospitals.

A Respectful Pro-Life View

Kelsey

So many of us read opinion pieces about abortion for one of two reasons: to get fired up because we agree, or to get fired up because we disagree. I wish we could have this talk in person, because I don’t want it to be that way. Reading someone else’s writing on a screen can seem impersonal, one-sided. It feels like the writer of the piece gets to continue on with their opinion, that you don’t get a chance to have your say in between each line. I wish we could have this talk in person so we could spend the majority of our time discussing how much we agree on. Instead, it often seems we already have our minds made up, and this unfortunately leaves so little room for discussion, so little room for loving one another. So, I want to start by saying I think we agree on much more than we disagree on.

More Than Just a Number

Daniel Ortiz, M4, Class of 2020

You are more than just a number.

But of course, you already knew that… right? Unfortunately, the reality is harrowing. Throughout our curriculum and challenging gauntlet of test after test, we discover that complex clinical reasoning is not submissive to the 3-digit score engraved onto our transcript for residency directors to see.

Unconstructive Criticism: A Disaster for Students

John Price, M4, Class of 2020

Self-improvement starts with a question, albeit a simple one:

“What am I doing that is right, and what am I doing that is wrong?”

A Guide to a Gene-Editing Philosophy

Nathan Stacy, M2, Class of 2022

Super Humans. Eradication of genetic diseases. Rich people boosting their kids’ traits, poor people left in the dust. Playing God.

These themes are hashed and rehashed in the great gene editing debate. And they all must be taken into account in what I will attempt to do next, which is to lay out a (beginners version of) a moral framework in which to understand and judge gene editing.

My thesis is this:

Make People Spend Their Own Money

Nathan Stacy, M1, Class of 2022

In college, my parents paid for my gas. I was broke (still am), but it was nice to not have to worry about the price of oil barrels.

In college, I always drove my friends around. Didn’t matter where we were going – ½ mile or 50 miles, I was always the driver. Sometimes they would offer to give me gas money, and I’d always tell them to not worry about it.

These are related. I knew that I didn’t have to pay for my own gas. So it didn’t bother me to always drive. It didn’t bother me to turn down gas money. It wasn’t really my money, you see. It was, as I like to call it, “magic money.”

Medicare for All – What is it, Exactly?

Kate Dixon, Class of 2023

Kate has worked in Washington D.C. for the past two years in policy.

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We’ve all seen the political tweets. Typically, something incoherent with poor grammar from one extreme of the political spectrum or the other (see my personal favorite about “HealtCare”). And as of late those tweets have had a lot to do with Medicare for All. But what exactly is Medicare for All (M4A)?