Rural Medicine in China

In 1993, I entered Zhejiang Medical University, one of China's top ten medical schools. Fortunately, I won a scholarship for each of my five years of study, but as every serious medical student knows, becoming a doctor requires serious study, and the program at Zhejiang was demanding. Even so, my motivation was strong. My desire to make sick people well and make healthy people live good lives drove me to study as diligently as possible. My vivid memories of my grandfather made me realize that the more knowledge of medicine I had, the more likely I could successfully intervene in a patient's agony.

Many Americans seem to believe that education in China is a humorless academic exercise, but life at Zhejiang had a fulfilling social component. I was vice president of the student association for a two-year term. That experience enabled me to learn how to communicate w

. . .
of patient rapport is difficult for me to overstate because it was tested in 1999, when I was part of an emergency-response medical team sent to a flooded town in Hebei province. What we found was an environment so impoverished that it had no electricity or running water. Realizing that infectious diseases could break out at any time, I also knew how important it was to feel no panic. As it turned out I had no time to feel panic, for I could not ignore the suffering faces and expressions of appreciation from the patients we treated. That assignment as much as any single event in my early work as an M.D. made me feel that no calling was more worthy than the one I had chosen. While my residency positioned me to select from a variety of specialty areas, I was focusing on specializing as a surgeon. Then, in 2000, my husband got a job offer in the United States. I followed him there in 2001, expecting to continue building a medical practice. It should be no surprise that a slight case of culture and language shock set in. Thus I decided to leave the hospital that had hired me to give me the time I needed to adjust. Giving up daily patient contact was the most difficult part of that decision, but I soon got a job at the core lab of Meh
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Duke HIV, Tianjin China's, University China's, , MT-2 CEMx-174, Medical Center, Hospital August, Graduated MD, Focused DNA, Durham NC, duke university, zhejiang medical university, department surgery duke, meharry medical college, medical center, medical university, medical schools, dna sequencing, university medical, data analysis, reporter gene expression, reporter gene, patient service, pseudotype virus, luciferase reporter gene,
Approximate Word count = 1446
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Rural Medicine in China