Page 4 - Spring 2016
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Mariah Miller
Class of 2019
University of Kansas School of Medicine – Kansas City

Bringing Rural Conversations into Clinic

Being raised in a small, tight knit community like Harper has offered me many benefits
throughout the years from small class sizes and one on one attention at school, to community
involvement and instilling the importance of volunteering, but perhaps the most beneficial
aspect has been how second nature it has become for me to carry on conversations with any and
everybody. In the rural area I grew up in, nearly everybody knew everybody which often meant it
took my family on average at least an extra fifteen minutes to leave any given event from a restaurant, to a high school basketball
game, to a funeral because inevitably someone saw a friend that they had not had a chance to catch up with in quite a while. This
particular custom is not unique to my family and is joked about often in the community. Looking back, I can now truly appreciate
how this has helped to shape my social behaviors and helped to give me opportunities I may have otherwise missed out on.

Upon leaving my rural community for the urban settings of higher education it quickly became clear that this practice of leisurely
socializing was not a practice that was a part of many individual’s lives; this being said, I have had the chance to observe that chit
chat and conversing often does not come as easily for those who were not brought up rurally. Many miss out on the opportunity to
slow down and take the time to genuinely ask what is going on in another individual’s life because they do not have the constant
opportunities to practice and hone their skills. Mastering this practice is important to aspiring and current physicians because in
essence getting to know our patients and have genuine conversations in a safe environment is what we will be doing for the rest of
our careers.

Therefore, the rural upbringing that has helped to mold me into the person I am today has given me an advantage when it comes
to seeing patients. I am confident in my ability to carry on conversations with both new and established patients while also putting
the patients more at ease. This will allow me to obtain important details about medical conditions from patients who might
otherwise not feel comfortable enough to share information or may not even think it is connected to their medical condition,
ultimately allowing me to give my patients better care and be the best physician I can be.

Brandon Haefke
Class of 2019
University of Kansas School of Medicine – Kansas City

Compassionate Professionals

Not every treatment is purely biological. Some conditions are beyond what we have developed
the methods to treat; some ailments are more personal, social or economic than clinical. The
limits of the care we provide with medicine hardly talked about in the curriculum of medical
school, but I see it every time I step out of the classroom and into the real world of practice.

Once, when I was but a few weeks into medical school, I was shadowing an ER physician in a rural hospital when an unkempt young
man came in claiming to be in acute pain. He was rolling around on his bed, howling and clutching his abdomen. He gave a vague
and unhelpful history, and was largely uncooperative to physical exam. The nurse that saw him (as well as me) suspected that he
was only a drug seeker, but the physician decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and gave him medicine for pain relief. Upon
further workup, he was found to have an acute ileus- a very real cause for pain.

That sort of compassion is institutionally de-incentivized, and rare to find today. As a doctor’s toolkit expands, compassion as a
treatment is expected with decreasing frequency and received even less. But in the health care I’ve seen provided by many rural
physicians demonstrates to me that doctor as a care-giver still lives on. One of the many reasons I’ve chosen to pursue rural
medicine is to master that lost art of empathy myself. In small communities, doctors have an opportunity to be humans as well as
physicians, and so be more complete healers.
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