Berkshire Medical Center, Pittsfield, MA
This summer I participated in an observational internship program at Berkshire Medical Center through their Medical Education Department. This program was particularly appropriate for me for a few reasons. First of all, I do not know what I want to pursue as my career at this point in my life. I had never really considered myself as someone who would become a doctor and I only thought about the idea of going to medical school as an option this past year. Therefore, I wanted to give it a shot, and this internship program seemed to be the best opportunity for me to get a breadth of knowledge in the medical field. BMC is also a community teaching hospital, so the nurses and doctors are constantly teaching residents, medical students, and observers at different levels of medical knowledge. Finally, I was born at BMC and have lived my whole life in Pittsfield, so this internship was an opportunity for me to learn more about a place that is so crucial to the public health of the Berkshires. I have led a very privileged life thus far, largely thanks to the fact that I am a white, middle class, Catholic-raised, hetero, cis male, living in a place that these descriptions are the norm. As such, I have not had to face many of the challenges that many must deal with within my community.
The challenge that was most noticeable during my time at BMC was that of opioid addiction. This crisis is rampant across the country, and, while it would typically not affect my life directly, it is still a major issue in our local community. While many of us can live our lives ignorant to this problem, many people struggle with this terrible addiction every day and do not receive the support of the community in which they live. This stems from the stigma around addiction, the fact that many consider addiction to be a choice rather than a disease, and that the medical field is still not doing enough to minimize the amount of these drugs in circulation. During my time on the floors, there were a number of patients that were facing issues caused by the abuse of opiates.
My first week on the floors I was working with the Stroke Unit. After seeing a couple patients that had a history of opiate abuse as underlying issues to everything else that was immediately at risk, the medical student within the team pulled me aside to give me a quick lesson on opiates and certain measures that were taken to mitigate crisis at hand. The focus of this lesson was on a drug called Suboxone, which contains both buprenorphine and naloxone. The former of which is a partial opioid agonist that blocks the opiate receptors and reduces a person’s urges, while the latter helps to reverse the effects of opiates on a person’s body. Naloxone is more commonly known by its brand name, Narcan, which is being used evermore frequently as an emergency treatment for narcotic overdose. The basic way that Suboxone ideally works is that, in small quantities, it relieves the urges that a person will feel while undergoing withdrawal, but will act like Narcan if a person tries to overuse it, putting them into severe withdrawal. Lessons such as these were the times that I learned the most during my experience at BMC.
After morning rounds on the floors with the team, I would accompany the residents to their daily conferences. During these, we would learn about various aspects of the hospital, present information about certain ailments, as well as participate in discussions about prior cases in which the staff felt their work could have improved. All of these proved to me that BMC continually strives to make their staff more knowledgeable and more effective at their jobs in serving our community.
My two favorite weeks were in the Mother-Baby Unit and in the Operating Rooms. While I was in Mother-Baby, I went on rounds with the attending pediatrician, who would walk me through the examination and note specific points of interest, such as a heart murmur or signs of jaundice. I was also lucky enough to witness two births during my week there: one natural and one cesarean section. Watching both kinds of birth was honestly bizarre and crazy, but it really was overwhelmingly incredible. Being in that moment with the family meant a lot to me. All of the doctors, nurses, and midwives in this unit were particularly personable, and I could see how it made the families much more comfortable with the whole process.
While I was in the OR I saw a variety of different procedures. I saw multiple laparoscopic (minimally-invasive) cholecystectomies and appendectomies, a video-assisted thoracic surgery of an upper lung biopsy for lung cancer, a plate implant for a distal humerus fracture, a total knee replacement, an excision of an urachal remnant, and even a robotic multiple incisional hernia repair. It was fascinating to see all of these procedures. I know that I would never be able to do it myself, and, while surgery is often pretty brutal to watch, I truly respected and trusted the people performing them. One of my favorite surgeries to observe was a bicep tendon repair on my last day. The orthopedic surgeon was the father of some people I went to high school with and he was very helpful in explaining the various parts of the procedure. First, they had to find and retrieve the bicep tendon as it had detached from the radius and retracted up the arm. Once they found the tendon, they drilled into the radius and bound the tendon within the hole. Within 12 weeks, the tendon will fuse to the bone and will be theoretically as strong as it was before.
I would like to thank the people that helped make this opportunity possible: to Dr. Gray Ellrodt, who is the director of this program at BMC, I wish him a happy retirement and hope that someone takes up the mantle of this program; to all of the doctors, nurses, residents, and interns with whom I worked this summer, you all taught me a great deal about various aspects of the medical field; and to the ’68 Center for Career Exploration, for all their help with organizing ASIP. Finally, I would like to thank the Kraft Family for their generosity and for sponsoring me in this opportunity. Thanks to all the support these people have given me, I was able to have this experience and learn more not only about myself and what I want for my future, but also about my community.
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