Doctors and nurses in white rushing in and out, patients streaming through the doors, complaints ranging from a toothache to a heart attack, the scent of a hospital permeating through the white-walled rooms -- the emergency room can be an extraordinarily intense, fast-paced environment. Very few people get a look behind the scenes of this unique area of a hospital, but several undergraduate students have the opportunity to do so through Interdisciplinary Studies 203, Emergency Medicine.
"I signed up for the class because I was taking pre-med classes like orgo, orgo lab, calc -- you're doing all this hard science stuff that doesn't seem to be applicable at all to what it would be like to be a doctor," second-year College student Meredith Barnes said. "I had heard great things [about the class], and I decided it would be really great to take a class that would give you an idea of what the end product would be. You could look and see this is something that you enjoy a lot. That's really unique, and it can give you the motivation to get through all the hard classes."
INST 203 consists of an hour-and-a-half lecture once a week and a weekly three-hour shift in the University Emergency Department.
"The lecture definitely exceeded my expectations because all the lectures have been given by Dr. Powers, who is a seasoned emergency department doctor," Barnes said. "And it's not only that -- he has a master's in public health, so he knows all about emergency medicine. In addition, I feel like I've learned a lot about the problems in the American health system."
Second-year College student Nandita Mani said they recently discussed insurance policies during lecture.
"We talked about the uninsured in America and potentially coming up with a national health care plan," Mani said, adding that Dr. Powers "has a special interest in how the health care system is financed, so we often discuss that."
The emergency department shift, however, is the truly unique aspect of INST 203.
"Most undergraduate students aren't able to volunteer in the ER," Mani said. "And being able to follow an ER doctor is a great privilege. We do research in the ER, but we're also there to observe, and having that exposure makes this class a very different experience from volunteering. It'll feel like we're a part of it. With pre-med, the classes we take are not really relevant to medical school and the profession. The reason why I think this class will be so helpful is that we'll get to know exactly what it's like to be working in a hospital."
Barnes also emphasized the practicality of this course.
"Everyone should know more about the health care system because everyone will partake in it sometime in their life," Barnes said. "It's so applicable to everyone's life, no matter what you're studying."
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