Adventure Awaits

This week I looked more into matters that involved myself finding a mentor and getting more information on the field and the specific duties I would be performing. I started the week looking into various pediatric surgeons in the Dallas area. This was a little disappointing for me because there were very little pediatric surgeons around my area. I was already aware of this because of my research that stated that pediatric surgery was a very small and very intensive field that many states did not even have fellowship for. But given that Texas has one of the most fellowships by any state I assumed there would be more pediatric surgeons around my area. However despite Texas having more than a hundred pediatric surgeons, the majority of them lived in Fort Worth or at least Dallas which is an hour drive at the least.This made me a little scared and anxious about finding a mentor because I already know that in my class itself there is another student who is studying pediatric surgery as well, so it is going to be incredibly difficult to find a good and capable mentor that is close enough so that I can travel at ease and available.

With the limited amount of pediatric surgeons I realized I would have to look into other prospects of the mentorship other than pediatric surgeon. So I looked into possibilities of having general surgeons, neonatologists, and pediatricians as mentors just in case the pediatric surgeon mentor that I pick is not available. This made me even more determined to do extra well in ISM this year, or more specifically this semester, because I need to stand out to possible mentors in order to get the minor that I choose before anyone else claims them. When I went to do my interview questions I realized that I had so many questions. Most of my questions were more specifically based to my field and it was a little bit more difficult to come up with the more general questions because a lot of the general questions I had researched and found the answers to. However with the specific pediatric surgery related with questions I had very little background information so I am very eager to start interviewing pediatric surgeons or other surgeons in order to at least get a better idea on what duties I will be performing and how I will be executing these duties.When I began to think of possible answers to these questions I began to realize that despite my knowledge from medical terminology and health science I really had essentially no knowledge of the terminology that I would be hearing from these pediatric surgeons.

So that is why when I did my research assignment I specifically tailored it to focus on new terminology. I spend at least two hours simply going through various procedures that were listed on pediatric surgeon hospitals in order to understand what type of procedures I would not only be watching but possibly performing in the future. It definitely was very beneficial because it gave me more confidence to approach a mentor which will give me a better impression when I talk to the esteemed doctors because not only will I be confident in what I'm talking about I will understand that answers that are given in response to these questions. Next week, having finished the platform for my digital portfolio, I hope to to add more information that will help me organize my ISM experience throughout this year.