Photo: Bryan Goodchild
The Collaborative in Health Equity and the Department of Neurology at UMass Chan Medical School hosted more than two dozen students from Worcester Technical High School in May for an inside look at the field of neurology.
The program, “A Day in the Life: Neurology Edition,” welcomed the high school juniors in the Allied Health Program for experiences focused on cutting-edge care provided to patients and families by UMass Chan and UMass Memorial Health neurologists.
Veronica Peschansky, MD, PhD, assistant professor of neurology, helped organize the program and said the goals are to involve community members in medical careers and expose students to neurology early. Dr. Peschansky said she hopes the students will develop an interest in health care and possibly neurology.
“We all go into medicine because we want to help and we want to care for patients, but also because it’s fascinating. The more you learn about the nervous system, the more interesting it is. If you can get that spark early, I think it’s that excitement of learning that will hopefully inspire students to want to see themselves in these careers,” Dr. Peschansky said.
The students started each day visiting stations that included hands-on learning and lecture programs. The stations included electromyography, electroencephalography, neurological examination, botox injection and neurointerventional radiology, or neuroIR.
Worcester Tech juniors Gifty Murray and Leeana Roberts recently passed the Massachusetts nurse aide certification exam and expressed interest in attending medical school in the future and exploring the fields of neurology, cardiology and interventional radiology. They said the Day in the Life program helped provide insights into the challenges and motivations of professionals in these fields.
Photo: Bryan Goodchild
“The whole day has been very informative, and I’ve taken away some new insight in the neurology field and the opportunities that might be available to us later in life,” Roberts said.
“We’re learning a lot in this program, especially to keep an open mind about neurology,” Murray said. “A few years from now, maybe we will end up loving it and it could be a career for us.”
The program was supported by the Schwartz Foundation.
