my first year. Conditions that I had previously encountered only in textbooks were suddenly in front of me. I had learned how to palpate for hepatosplenomegaly but had never actually felt an enlarged liver or spleen until caring for a pediatric patient with malaria. I watched thyroidectomies for large goiters, a condition that is now rarely encountered clinically in the U. S. Perhaps the most interesting case was the baby admitted to the NICU for feeding intolerance who was found to have a tracheoesophageal fistula, dextrocardia and sinus inversus. Concepts that had once existed as words on a lecture slide suddenly became patients with families, stories and lives.
But the most important lessons I learned in Ethiopia had very little to do with the procedures I observed. My time there taught me what it feels like to navigate a healthcare system where you do not speak the language, understand every cultural norm or immediately feel at home. For the first time, I experienced what it was like to enter a healthcare environment where I could not automatically assume that I understood what was being said or that others understood me.
The experience gave me new insight on the patients I will one day care for here in the U. S. I thought about immigrants who enter our healthcare system unable to communicate comfortably in English, patients who are unfamiliar or uncomfortable in the hospital or families who encounter a physician that does not look like them or share their cultural background. I cannot claim that four weeks in Ethiopia allowed me to fully understand these experiences, but it gave me a small glimpse into the vulnerability of navigating a system that feels unfamiliar. More importantly, it gave me a greater sense of empathy for patients who
may experience that same vulnerability when they enter our healthcare system. While my experiences as a student navigating an unfamiliar healthcare setting taught me a lot about the patient side of medicine, the physicians I worked alongside taught me just as much about the other side of the equation: what it means to build a life around medicine.
The providers I worked with were deeply committed to their patients, but they also highly valued their communities, relationships and their own well-being. They cherished the small moments between procedures; morning and afternoon coffee were not simply breaks in the workday, but opportunities to gather, talk and connect. Coming from an environment where medical training can sometimes feel like a constant race to accomplish the next task, especially in medical school, I was struck by their willingness to slow down and appreciate the people around them. I was reminded that caring for patients does not have to come at the expense of caring for yourself or the people around you.
Perhaps the most valuable thing I brought home from Ethiopia was a different perspective, having returned with a deeper appreciation for the privilege of caring for patients, greater empathy for those navigating an unfamiliar healthcare system and a renewed understanding that being a good physician requires more than clinical knowledge. It requires curiosity, humility, compassion and a willingness to learn from the people and places that are different from our own.
My time spent seven years in the past has led me to forever think differently about the future.
Emma Rose Vincent is a second-year medical student at the University of Louisville School of Medicine.
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