JSNMA SUMMER 2019 Sneak Preview

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20 Commentary all advocacy-minded medical students be strategic in order to maximize their efficiency and likelihood for academic success. One strategy for maximizing success was implemented at Stanford University School of Medicine by a handful of medical students, including the authors, who closely followed the Black Lives Matter movement and White Coats for Black Lives organization. In 2016, we convened following the publicized deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and felt compelled to advocate for an improved training environment at our institution to actively support our current URMs and increase the number of URMs by demonstrating a commitment to diversity. We met with other graduate students in the Black Biosciences Student Association, who similarly felt the need to improve support for URM students. Not only did we support one another through this devastating time, but we also productively channeled our frustrations into a list of actionable steps to improve the training environment at the medical school. One of our recommendations was to build a community center to help foster solidarity amongst trainees from diverse backgrounds and establish a culture of belonging. What began as a simple recommendation amongst medical students motivated to advocate for change, soon developed into the procurement of $100,000 from the Dean of our medical school to establish a community center that we then helped to create. Upon reflecting on the successful outcome of our initiative, we have identified a number of strategies that may be useful to medical students hoping to succeed in their studies as well as their advocacy efforts. Reflection 1: Prioritize your personal health and well-being. Engaging in advocacy efforts while completing medical school can be taxing on your mental and physical health. Creating an environment that emphasizes open communication and personal well-being allowed us to be honest and supportive of one another, which in turn helped to bring forth constructive ideas. Reflection 2: Create a diverse leadership group. Our SNMA chapter and Black Biosciences Student Association later collaborated with Stanford residents and postdoctoral fellows to formulate a plan for the community center after receiving a grant from the Dean. It was beneficial to have individuals from different graduate programs and at various stages in their training come together under the shared goal of improving support for minority trainees. The diversity of the group J o u r n a l o f t h e S t u d e n t N a t i o n a l M e d i c a l A s s o c i a t i o n Given the current political climate, URM medical students, in particular, must continue to play a role in the future direction of our institutions and communities. helped to maintain the momentum of our work and incorporated multiple perspectives to ensure that the center met all of our needs. Reflection 3: Use your institutional history to guide your efforts. Medical training programs are brief with a high rate of turnover compared to the lifetime of an institution. Thus, we identified several long-term community members (including former students, faculty, staff, and administrators) who were instrumental in our understanding of previous advocacy efforts at our medical school. In doing so, we learned what initiatives had been attempted in the past. We also learned that our administrative leadership is most receptive to efforts that align with the mission of the institution. With this knowledge, we were able to tailor our approach to maximize our chance at success. Reflection 4: Create a prioritized list for potential plans of action. Although we had many ideas, we found it most effective to pursue the plan of action that the greatest number of us would rally behind. By pursuing the plan that we were all mutually excited about, we found it relatively easy to evenly distribute the workload throughout the process. Reflection 5: Maintain open communication with faculty and program administrators. Our initiative required administrative oversight in order to be implemented. Through their supervisory role, we learned from trial and error the importance of clear and open Continued on page 75 REFERENCES 1. Press, V. G., Fritz, C. D., & Vela, M. B. (2015). First-Year Medical Student Attitudes About Advocacy in Medicine Across Multiple Fields of Discipline: Analysis of Reflective Essays. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 2(4), 556-564. doi:10.1007/s40615-015-0105-z
Opinion 21 In my first year of medical school, I was taught how to assess mental health with an alphabet soup of acronyms. I practiced how to compassionately ask patients about anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Knowing that I am in a profession with high rates of burnout and suicide, I also trust that if I or my classmate were to become one of these patients that our deans, faculty, and fellow classmates would support and respect us in the same way in which we have been taught to treat our patients.1 This, however, requires a more multi-pronged approach at the institutional level. The constant stress and unique demands of medical school, unlike perhaps any other educational process, can tear away previously established compensatory mechanisms and reveal or exacerbate an underlying psychiatric condition. A meta-analysis of 62,728 medical students estimated a 28.0 percent global prevalence of depression.2 Thus, at an institutional level, there is merit to offering optional yet confidential mental health assessments for incoming medical students, who can then use these preliminary results to seek additional support early on. In conjunction with providing counseling services, it is important to interrogate the relative homogeneity of student and faculty populations within our profession. It is impossible to disentangle mental well-being from one’s identity, whether as a queer woman of color, a recent immigrant, or an Indigenous person.3 It is often far easier to disclose sensitive information with someone who has had similar experiences or speaks the same language. The strength of these trusted relationships is what allows minorities to confide and restore, especially medical students of color. Thus, it is key for administrators to continue recruiting and retaining students and faculty with Continued on page 75 REFERENCES 1. Cook Grossman, D. (2016). Reducing the Stigma: Faculty Speak Out About Suicide Rates Among Medical Students, Physicians. Retrieved July 9, 2018, from https://news.aamc.org/medical-education/ article/reducing-stigma-suicide-rates/ 2. Puthran, R., Zhang, M. W. B., Tam, W. W., & Ho, R. C. (2016). Prevalence of depression amongst medical students: a meta-analysis. Medical Education, 50(4), 456–468. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.12962 3. Gengoux, G. W., & Roberts, L. W. (2018). Ethical Use of Student Profiles to Predict and Prevent Development of Depression Symptoms During Medical School. Academic Medicine, 1. https://doi. org/10.1097/ACM.0000000000002436 4. Hardeman, R. R., Przedworski, J. M., Burke, S., Burgess, D. J., Perry, S., Phelan, S., … van Ryn, M. (2016). Association Between Perceived Medical School Diversity Climate and Change in Depressive Symptoms Among Medical Students: A Report from the Medical Student CHANGE Study. Journal of the National Medical Association, 108(4), 225–235. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnma.2016.08.005 5. Acheampong, C., Davis, C., Holder, D., Averett, P., Savitt, T., & Campbell, K. (2018). An Exploratory Study of Stress Coping and Resiliency of Black Men at One Medical School: A Critical Race Theory Perspective. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-018- 0516-8 6. Leyerzapf, H., & Abma, T. (2017). Cultural minority students’ experiences with intercultural competency in medical education. Medical Education, 51(5), 521–530. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.13302 7. Villwock, J. A., Sobin, L. B., Koester, L. A., & Harris, T. M. (2016). Impostor syndrome and burnout among American medical students: a pilot study. International Journal of Medical Education, 7, 364–369. https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.5801.eac4 A U G U S T 2 0 1 9
Page 3 and 4: 3 ASSOCIATE EDITORS COPY EDITOR
Page 5 and 6: 5 »» p.23 »» p.47 »» p.54 Com
Page 7 and 8: Letter from the Editor 7 Dear Reade
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Page 11 and 12: Opinion 11 AN UNSPOKEN EXPECTATION
Page 13 and 14: 13 2016 U.S. News & World Report A
Page 15 and 16: President's Greeting 15 Dear SNMA F
Page 17: Commentary 19 ACTIVISM IN MEDICAL S
Page 21 and 22: 23 generations. As the number of mi
Page 23 and 24: Events 25 2018-2019 Board of Direct
Page 26 and 27: 32 Scientific Focus DEAR MAN: A TRA
Page 28 and 29: 34 Scientific Focus Table 1. Worksh
Page 30: 36 Scientific Focus Another limitat
Page 34 and 35: 40 Scientific Focus autograft in th
Page 36 and 37: 42 Academic Corner UPCOMING OPPORTU
Page 38 and 39: 48 Commentary WHAT WE “DO”: UND
Page 40 and 41: 56 Commentary THE PROVISIONS OF TIT
Page 42 and 43: 58 Opinion A REFLECTION ON THE IMPO
Page 44 and 45: 60 Commentary A 2002 study publishe
Page 46 and 47: 62 Commentary ...To change the [hea
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Page 50 and 51: 68 Commentary A Seed of Faith in Ca
Page 52 and 53: 70 Commentary neglect the physical,
Page 54: 72 Commentary “My month at Espera
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Page 61: ASeed of Faith Caring for the Urban

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