New medical students getting settled in Rome
‘I’ve worked with
Dr. Paul Brock for three weeks and he is just an incredible human, and it’s so inspiring to wake up every day and show up and work with him.’ Lauren Favors Dallas, Texas
‘I knew this was a place I felt like I wanted to be.’ Elizabeth Lee Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
The sixth class of medical school students to flow through the Northwest Georgia Clinical campus of the Medical College of Georgia includes 10 third-year students from as far away as Texas and California. The new class started their work in Rome the first week of June and have already been put through a variety of hands-on learning with local doctors and medical professionals.
The future physicians include Kurt
Mueller, Watkinsville; Meredith Arra, Atlanta; Phillip Cox, Dacula; Tricia Walters, Rome; Katie Birge, Marietta; Nathan Howell, Roswell; Elizabeth Lee, Rancho Palos Verdes, California; Lauren Favors, Dallas, Texas; Clara Formby, North Augusta, South Carolina; and Kevin Lindsay, who calls himself an Air Force brat.
Mueller chose the Rome campus to complete his medical education for a couple of reasons.
“I heard about how the community in Rome came together to support the students, how all of the attending physicians that we would work with had very personal relationships with all the students and the ability to see what rural medicine is like,” Mueller said.
‘This is probably the type of place that I’m going to end up practicing once I finish my residency.’ Kurt Mueller Watkinsville
“This is probably the type of place that I’m going to end up practicing once I finish my residency,” Mueller continued.
Mueller said he had not yet decided what area of medicine he would ultimately like to specialize in.
Favors said she chose the Rome program for an opportunity to establish direct relationships with people that she had an opportunity to treat, as well as the medical professionals that she would have a chance to work with.
She has already become extremely interested in surgery for a career.
“I’ve worked with Dr. Paul Brock for three weeks and he is just an incredible human, and it’s so inspiring to wake up every day and show up and work with him. It gives me so much hope for the rest of this year,” Favor said.
Lee, the Californian, chose to come to the Medical College of Georgia after an interview during which she realized that everyone seemed to know everyone else.
“I knew this was a place I felt like I wanted to be,” Lee said. She then chose the pro- gram in Rome for her third and fourth year studies for its longitudinal curriculum, following a patient across the various doctors visits.
“You get to learn about people and what’s important in their lives. You get to help them with the health care aspect of it,” Lee said.
The medical students will spend the next two years in Rome before going on to their medical residency programs.