Jaclyn Tolentino is a medical student any patient would love to have beside the bed perusing a chart. She’s smart, articulate and enthusiastic about her chosen career of medicine.
She is one of the medical students who, since 2005, have spent their third or fourth year of medical school work-ing with Danville physicians through a partnership between Danville Regional Medical Center and the Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine in Blacksburg.
Each student spends nine months in Danville, rotating through one-month stints in different medical specialties — family medicine, internal medicine, emergency medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, psychiatry, general surgery, pediat-rics, geriatrics and rural family medicine. Nine students from VCOM are currently in Danville.
Tolentino has found her past months in Danville scary at first, but ultimately rewarding and fun.
“Most of the medical students are doing their rotations in Virginia, but Danville was one of sites where you could do all your rotations in one site,” said. “That way I was able to get an apartment and be more familiar with the people and doctors, which made things easier for me.”
She finished up a rotation in psychiatry in May and has now started her geriatric rotation. She will return in July to do a fourth-year rotation in family medicine.
Tolentino is pursuing a degree in osteopathic medicine and was surprised to find that eight of the physicians in the area are also doctors of osteopathy, or ODs.
Osteopathic medicine uses a unique, holistic approach to medical care, Tolentino explained.
“Osteopathic physicians understand how the human body is a sum of interconnected systems, including a special focus on the musculoskeletal system,” she said. “By using a ‘whole person’ approach rather than treating specific symptoms, osteopathic physicians emphasize how additional knowledge can be gained from the patient in a thorough history and physical exam by utilizing additional training.”
Working one-on-one
The best part about working in Danville, she said, has been the one-on-one experience she has been able to have with so many doctors, unlike students in larger areas who might have four or five students assigned to a doctor.
“That has been the most interesting — being able to meet so many different doctors,” she said. “Each of them has different personality and is at a different stage in their careers.”
Working in a pediatric practice with four doctors was especially gratifying to her.
“I worked with all four, which is great, one week each,” she said. “That was nice because in one month’s rotation, I got to see how they practiced. It was a very different type of experience, depending on who I was working with.”
Even though Tolentino hasn’t finished medical school, the doctors — there are now 48 of them in Danville who participate — treat the students as peers as much as possible.
“One of the first questions the doctors ask when you’re on your rotation is what you (field of medicine) you want to go into because they are trying to decide from their perspective what you want to learn,” she said. “Basically, they treat you like an intern and talk to you on the same level as a colleague. You may discuss patients and do rounds in the morning. Or you might do rounds in the morning on your own and present to the attending physician just like you are an intern … Depending on the doctor, it can be very hands-on and a lot of communication. But for the most part, they give you a lot of responsibility.”
Tolentino has decided to become a family medicine doctor, although she said she came into the rotations with an open mind and evenconsidered her rotation in the emergency room “fun.” She said she is a “people person,” so she enjoys the continuity of care that is a big part of family medicine.
“After the second year of medical school, any student going into the rotations goes in with an open mind,” she said. “So I tried that, but in the end it turned out that I saw myself doing family medicine. I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.”
Scary beginning
Her first rotation plunged her right into surgery, which she was intimidating at first.
“Looking back, it was definitely scary for me because I started with surgery and didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “You’ve been studying for two years, taking a lot of exams and you’ve completed your board exams, which exhausts you, and then suddenly you are holding a scalpel. And you think, ‘Geez, whoa.’ It’s exciting.
“It was intimidating at first, but once you see the way the doctors treat you, then it makes you feel comfortable and didn’t make you feel like you were inferior. So after that first one, it went away with the first one and was no longer intimidating.”
Working with women physicians was an inspiration to her, Tolentino said.
“A woman physician is different,” she said. “Maybe it’s because I’m a woman, but the way the patients receive you is different. You have to consider your career as well as whether you want to have a family of your own and . . . how you are going to try and juggle and fit things in.”
After seeing how other women doctors were able to successfully reconcile having a career and a family, Tolentino concluded that it can be done.
“No matter what the specialty is, you can make it work,” she said. “There are no excuses. If you really want to do something, no matter what it is, you can do it, whether it’s being a doctor or having kids. It’s nice to see there are other physicians that have made it work. It was inspirational.”
Besides her work in doctor’s offices and at the hospital, Tolentino went to the Free Clinic of Danville on her own to volunteer, which proved to be an eye-opening experience for her.
“The experience you get there with patients who have nothing is different,” she said. “It’s nice to see all the different doctors who work there. If you want to see all levels of primary care, it’s a great way to see patients haven’t been cared for and have a lot of things building up.”
Impressed with the doctors who work full days at their own offices and then volunteer two or three hours on a Tuesday night, Tolentino has told other medical students that they should go and volunteer at the Clinic.
“Every time I left the Free Clinic, I left with a new piece of knowledge,” she said. “I also got to work with even more doctors than I would have if I hadn’t gone.”
In the end, Tolentino said her experience has enabled her to work with a lot of different doctors and take “a little good piece” from each one.
“You learn to appreciate it,” she said.