Introduction

Hello all and welcome to my first blog post! I am very excited to begin this journey with all of you and hope you guys are excited too! I have decided to dedicate this first post to explaining more in depth my project and why it is important to me.

Ever since I was little, I have wanted to be a doctor and while my specific field of interest has changed from obstetrics to pediatric surgery to cardiology, I have always maintained my passion for the field of medicine. I have pursued this love through volunteer programs, internships, and lectures. So, when the opportunity arose where I could pursue a project of my own choosing, I jumped on the idea of shadowing several medical professionals ranging from a rural family physician to an ER doctor.

I will begin my project by flying to a town in the south of France, Puget. There I will shadow a female physician who is the only woman capable to birth a baby in a one hundred mile radius. She works under a practice with a few other doctors and she makes frequent home visits, in which she must travel through several miles of mountainous countryside just to reach one of her patients. In France, I will be able to interview her and the other doctors in her practice, follow her during home visits, and visit the Emergency Room which is located miles away from the town itself. I will also be able to give each patient I meet a survey to measure the level of patient care and health care they experience. My time in France (30 days) will mainly be spent just analyzing rural medical practices and accumulating data on the care the patient's experience.

Puget, France

Then, on March 13th, I will return to Scottsdale. Here, I will follow a doctor through an urgent care center where I will be able to watch her administer medical aid and interview her patients. I will interview her and survey the patients in the urgent care center as well. I will also spend my time volunteering at Honor Health Hospital where I will be able to observe the working of a major hospital and interview other volunteers, administrators, and nurses.

All of these experiences will provide me with a firm understanding and data on how rural and urban medical practices work. Using this newfound knowledge, I will be able to make a comparison between the two forms of healthcare and infer ways in which both could learn form each other in terms of patient care. My general hypothesis (which may change) is that in rural medicine, the personal relationship between the doctor and patient creates a better and more beneficial form of healthcare. However, this again is limited by the lack of resources and other doctors in rural areas thereby making a rural doctors job harder.

I hope that by reading this you learned a bit more about what I will be exploring for the next few months! My Senior Project Proposal (linked in the right tab) goes much more into detail of the specifics, so feel free to check that out as well. Again I am very excited to embark on this journey and am eager to see where my research takes me! Thank you for reading!