A Cross-Country Learning Experience

BY LAUREN FILIPPINI (ALPHA CHI, BUTLER UNIVERSITY), MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

Medical school is challenging enough on its own. Add in a new location and specialty every few weeks and a cross-country journey in an RV, and you’ve got quite an adventure. This has been the past year for Amy Wysong (Omicron, Baker University) as she pursues her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree – and it’s providing her valuable insight into the medical field and how she wants to make a difference.

Amy fell in love with science in college. She earned a master’s degree in biomedical sciences but quickly realized she missed caring for patients in her previous work as a certified nursing assistant. So she entered the osteopathic medicine program at the University of New England College of Medicine, where she completed two years of didactic education, a year of clinical rotations in a hospital, and a year teaching first-year medical students as part of an undergraduate fellowship.

When it was time to set up her final year of clinical rotations, where she would be practicing medicine under physician supervision, she chose an unorthodox path.

Typically, medical students in their final year cycle through various clinical specialties in a single location to get training across the medical field; however, Amy decided to cycle through experiences across the country. Her school allows medical students to travel anywhere willing to train them for rotations; Amy took that permission to travel seriously and decided to build her own cross-country training experience!

“It took a lot of luck for people to respond to emails and phone calls, and then a lot of flexibility for us,” she says. She lined up rotations on a route traveling the U.S. from east to west. “And then we needed places to stay, which is when the RV came into it.”

Acknowledging her privilege that allowed her to take this path, Amy and her partner, Chad Phillips, purchased an RV and set off on an adventure. Leaving from Maine, they made stops for her rotations in New Hampshire, West Virginia, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Kansas and Arizona. The road trip took a brief pause for a flight to New Zealand, and then resumed in New Mexico, eventually wrapping up in Utah.

While not the traditional path, this unique experience has provided Amy with valuable lessons to carry into her medical career. From her time with a medical examiner, she learned the importance of caring for the dead and communicating compassionately with families. Her experience at a maximum-security prison hospital reinforced her belief that every person deserves quality medical care. She worked in urban and rural hospitals and practiced everything from reproductive health care to cancer treatments to wilderness lifesaving skills.

“It's been a really cool way to see how different people in different parts of the country practice medicine,” Amy explains. “I tried to do rural medicine and then city-based medicine and just seeing how the health care system falls short but also does a really good job for patients.”

This year has also affirmed Amy’s plan to pursue family medicine and to “take care of the populations that everyone forgets about.” This passion took root while Amy volunteered with community health initiatives over the years. She explains, “My inspiration has come from the people who are really boots on the ground working through those initiatives and love the work they do, [who are] often undervalued by the system at large. … Sometimes it’s easy to forget that helping one person or one situation is actually a pretty big deal.”

This echoes Amy’s takeaways from her collegiate Alpha Chi Omega experience as VP philanthropy and chapter president, where she built skills around creating buy-in and mobilizing efforts behind a shared goal through efforts like increasing her chapter’s volunteer hours and becoming more educated on inclusivity. Amy loves when people ask about sorority life so she can debunk some myths, highlight its positive impact on young people, and share her experience facilitating Let’s Talk Love and educating about healthy relationships.

The learning from Amy’s past year extended beyond practicing medicine. With so many logistics to consider – like how to get from the RV campsite to the hospital (including an electric scooter) and how to service a diesel fuel engine – Amy says this experience has been a lesson in “figuring it out as we go, which was a really important growth mindset.” She’s also learned to keep an open mind and recognize how everyone can play a role in a team.

For those inspired by her journey, Amy shares the best advice she’s received: “Do whatever you want.” This advice has shaped her path on the road and into the future as a doctor. “I can listen to everyone else’s ideas and opinions, but at the end of the day, I have to make a choice. That might be what someone else has done or something totally different, but [I will] figure my way out through it.”

AMY TAKING A RESIDENCY INTERVIEW IN HER RV IN MINNESOTA; SHE MATCHED TO THE FULL CIRCLE FAMILY MEDICINE RESIDENCY IN BOISE THAT BEGINS IN JUNE