My name is Kieu-My Nguyen, and I am a current 4th year medical student at UNE COM hoping to match into orthopedic surgery. My interest in orthopedics started with my passion of figure skating, where I first learned about the field of sports medicine after sustaining a few minor injuries as a competitive athlete. My interest in surgery later came from my experience working as a certified surgical technologist, so naturally combining these two fields you get orthopedic surgery. Many of the activities that bring me joy outside of medicine involve having mobility, such as skiing, roller blading, and yoga. In orthopedics, you can not only help athletes or weekend warriors recover from their injuries, but also the aging population live pain free, and those who sustain traumatic injuries get back to their daily lives.
During my first year at UNE COM, I joined the Orthopedics-Sports Medicine Club, and later became an executive board member of this club. I truly enjoy taking on leadership roles as I can expand my involvement within the community and am given a platform to execute various events to benefit other students. At UNE COM, I was also involved in SGA and served as the Osteoblast! and Orientation Co-Chair. However, I knew I wanted to expand my connections within orthopedics and decided to attend the American Osteopathic Academy of Orthopedics (AOAO) Conference during the fall of my second year. The student section was holding their executive board elections at this conference as well, so I thought to myself why not run for a position and see what happens. I was fortunate enough to be elected as National Secretary and through this role, I was able to make significant updates to our mentorship database, increase communication with local chapters across the country, and improve SAOAO’s social media presence to spread more about what we do to other osteopathic medical students interested in orthopedics.
After my term as National Secretary, I then went on to become the National President during my third year of medical school. Leading a national organization was an incredible experience where I was able to work closely with the AOAO Board of Directors by serving as their Student Director and served on AOAO’s Social Media Committee. During my term as President, my executive board and I were able to significantly expand the number of new members, increase national conference attendance among students, and offer more scholarships. When I was secretary, we started a DEI scholarship for underrepresented students to help them offset the costs of attending our conferences. To further build upon this, I instituted a scholarship for 4th year students to help offset the costs of traveling to audition rotations. We were the first national organization to start offering this scholarship, and other national organizations such as ACOS-MSS have since followed suit.
Some of the other accomplishments throughout my time as President include expanding the number of orthopedic bootcamps hosted by residency programs across the country to help 3rd and 4th year medical students learn hands on skills to get them prepared for orthopedic rotations. My favorite part about orthopedic surgery is how hands on it is, and through that I’ve made an emphasis on including saw bones labs, splinting, and suturing workshops at each of our conferences. This past fall conference, we partnered with Synthes to have a 10 station saw bones lab for about 100 students to participate in. Here, they learned the basics of how to fix distal radius, femoral neck, and radial and ulnar shaft fractures.
Throughout my time serving on the National SAOAO executive board, I was able to make many meaningful connections with physicians at various residency programs, but also those who are UNE COM alumni. One of the reasons why I love being a student at UNE COM is due to our extensive alumni network across the country. These physicians have been a great sounding board whenever I needed advice and are great examples of the surgeon I want to be in my future practice. I owe my successes as an applicant into orthopedic surgery to the support UNE COM has provided and because of the nationwide connections I’ve made with physicians and residents through AOAO. I hope to stay involved within the AOAO as a resident to give back to medical students, and hopefully once I am an attending to spread the mission of osteopathic orthopedics and continue mentoring the next generation.