HELPING ‘UNDERREPRESENTED’ PURSUE MEDICAL CAREERS
A fourth-year medical student, Alyson Morgan, 30, who spent her summers in Vacaville while growing up, also reserves 'a special place' in her heart for military personnel and veterans
Alyson Morgan was nursing a corneal ulcer, an abscess on one of her eyes’ outer tissues that covers the iris and pupil.
Although she was speaking from her temporary Bakersfield residence, she works in a place where the problem can get treated and treated well: Kern Medical, a 222-bed teaching hospital in the Central Valley town north of Los Angeles.
A fourth-year medical student enrolled at Ross University School of Medicine in Dominica, a Caribbean island, Morgan spent her summers in Vacaville while growing up and will graduate at year’s end, then seek a residency in an accredited hospital where she hopes to specialize in general surgery.
During an hourlong interview last weekend, Morgan, 30, who claims Napa, where her grandparents live, as her official residence for the time being, said she has been filling out applications for residency, with interviews conducted online, of course, during the pandemic era.
“I’d love to stay in California,” she said. “I have a passion for serving underrepresented populations,” meaning to particularly encourage racial and ethnic groups underrepresented in the medical profession to pursue healthcare careers relative to their numbers in the general population.
A native of Columbus, Miss., Morgan added, “I feel that was
my main draw to medicine. I was intrigued by groups such as Doctors Without Borders (aka Medecins Sans Frontieres). That’s what always fascinated me since I was a child.”
And Morgan, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Eastern Washington University in Cheney, Wash., appears to have lived some of her dream.
While also growing up in Washington state, she came into contact with Northwest American Indian tribal members and led her to the Native American Pathways Program. In her role with that program, she began helping undergraduate students interested in medicine with basic science studies, preparing them for medical school admission, and discussing cultural differences that may affect medical care in American Indian communities.
“I have definitely learned that sometimes there’s maybe less access to health care” on tribal lands and longstanding cultural approaches to treating patients with traditional medicine, said Morgan.
“The important thing is, gaining trust between a parent and a provider,” she noted.
Within the past calendar
year, Morgan also worked with refugee communities in Tijuana, Mexico, offering healthcare and triage clinics to a population that does not regularly receive good- quality medical care.
“Classmates would drive from Los Angeles to San Diego and we’d walk over (the border) as a group,” she recalled, adding that
she and others treated Haitians, Guatemalans and Mexicans.
“We’d see people with diabetes, people living in overcrowded spaces, children with ringworm, and people with urinary tract infections,” said Morgan.
She also remembered visiting South Africa at age 13 for six weeks while working as an actor for the Disney Channel and saw people living in extreme poverty and, most likely, unable to access adequate medical care.
“When you’re 13, you have some grasp of reality, in a sense” said Morgan, the daughter of Robert Morgan of Vacaville and Frances Laws of Tuscaloosa, Ala. “It was a very, very different culture. I’d never been exposed to South African shantytowns. It’s not something you see in America. It was an eye- opener as a 13-year- old.”
Those experiences, her time in medical school, and a diverse medical school class continue to shape her view of medical care.
“We’ve come so far in education, health and research and there’s such a discrepancy” between what Americans and people in modern industrialized nations enjoy in terms of medical care and those who live in underdeveloped nations, she said.
“I try to put myself in others’ points of view and I think that’s what’s humbling,” she said. “One of my main motivations is trying to understand where they’re coming from.”
At Kern Medical, Morgan works in the trauma depar tment, where patients have had emergency surgery and are recuperating in the hospital. In the morning, she does her
“morning rounds,” checking up on her patients. Afterward, she meets with doctors and discusses patient care, what happened during the last 24 hours, and sees each patient individually.
“The rest of the day is managing those patients and paying attention to any patients that come into the trauma unit,” she said.
For anyone interested in a career in medicine, Morgan offered some general advice.
“I would say if that is your dream, then at all costs I’d pursue it. There are amazing opportunities for people who are older and pathways, like the Caribbean (medical) schools. If you work hard and dedicate your time and effort to that dream, it’s very much attainable.”
Morgan admits to “dabbling” with the idea of joining the U. S. military, especially the Air Force, and being stationed at David Grant Medical Center on Travis Air Force Base.
“I have a special place in my heart for people in the military and veterans,” she said. “I think it’s the ultimate honor to know those who are willing to give their life for an entire nation of people they’ve never met. I think that needs to be honored. We’re serving them with healthcare.”