Medical Student Shares How Camden Influenced Her Career Path

Steve Adubato goes One-on-One with Lakeisha Mulugeta-Gordon, 4th Year Student, Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, to discuss how the city of Camden impacted her experience and helped her choose her career path in medicine.

2/28/19 #2206

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Steve Adubato here. We're in Camden and we're speaking to one of the best and brightest here at the Medical School. She is Lakeisha Mulugeta-Gordon, fourth-year student at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. How you doing? I'm doing well. How are you? I hear nothing but... I'm doing great. I hear nothing but good things about you. Tell folks... you're graduating in May of '19? Yes. Going into? OBGYN. I eventually would like to be a gynecologic oncologist. Because? Well, I had this patient here that... we have like a student-run clinic and... I've heard about it. I met her in my clinic before I was on my gyn onc week, which is the week where you spend... You met this patient? Yeah, I met this patient. From Camden? From Camden, yeah. And she ended up being my clinic patient, but then when she had her surgery, I was able to be in her surgery because I was on my gyn onc week during my rotation. I just really bonded with her and she kind of is like the reason why I want to do gyn onc. She's the reason? Mm hmm. What did you see in her? How did you experience that case... I hate calling it that... that influence you and impacted you the way it clearly has? Well, I'll try and make this like, short and not too sciencey, but when she came to us, she came to our clinic cause she didn't have insurance, but Cooper was doing the surgery pro bono and she needed a preoperative clearance, and we couldn't do that for her because she had these symptoms that were concerning that she wouldn't be able to handle the surgery. Hmm. And when she came to us, it was a Thursday and her surgery was the following Tuesday. So, we really didn't have a lot of time to figure out what to do and how. To help her and so the following day, that Friday, I was able to go to like a cardiologist at Cooper and the heart station which is a place in the hospital where they do like, different... they have like different machines that look at the heart. Sure. And they were able to see her that day, if she could come like, right away, and then be cleared for her surgery on Tuesday, which happened to be my week when I was on gynecologic oncology. What did she want and need from someone like you? She just needed an advocate. So she's the reason why I want to do what I'm doing. I thought I was gonna be a pathologist for a very long time. I like pathology a lot..."