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The Black Doctors Podcast shares the stories of minority healthcare professionals with the goal of inspiring the next generation. “Office Hours” is a recurring segment that will provide actionable information and address questions received from listeners.
This episode specifically addresses several questions received from high school students who are wondering how they can best prepare for medical school, pharmacy school, dental school, etc.
Please listen and share with any high school students you know that are curious about graduate degrees in the health professions. Submit additional questions on our instagram page or website.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to office ours, some doctor, stephen bradley, a man is the siol gist and cynical medical ethicist. I am the host and the creator of the black doctor’s podcast started the show about or just over a year ago, and the goal of the show is to tell us stories of minority healthcare professionals with a goal of inspiring others really want to invest in the next generation of black and round positions, pharmacist, veterinarians, dentist and just tell these stories of people that overcame obstacles, folks, that you can relate to and realize that i couldn’t do this as well, so going to start doing this office hour segment work can actually provide relatable advice to specific individuals. I get a lot of questions and dm and on my website, or es the black outers podcast website for stephen bradley m d, i get questions from a lot of different people and i want to be able to answer those questions and target specific audiences. Today, i want to speak specifically to high school students, actually get a fair amount of question from high school students and they’re asking questions like you know. How do i prepare for medical school? What can i do and instead of you know, firing off emails back and forth? I think a lot of people do have these questions, i’m going to plan on recording these. So today i am speaking specifically to high school students. So if you know some high school students that are interested in medicine or health care related fields, please share with them. Specifically some of the questions that i get. What can i do to prepare for medical school and a lot of people? You know will first kind of say, hey well, it’s too early to really think about that, and and yes- and no it’s never too early to think about where you want your career to go. It’s definitely can be too early to stress about it, because the pathway through medicine can be very stressful. What can be very taxing? It does take up a lot of your time and i think for folks in high school. You need to realize that and be able to balance your future career and aspirations with where you are now in live. So my first bit of advice is to enjoy your life, whether you’re a freshman in college senior. You have to be able to step back and find a way to extract a value from the like that you’re currently living enjoy. Those tient courses that you’re going to be taking enjoy extracurricular activities will get a little bit more into that. The next couple minutes, first and foremost, you’ve got to enjoy the lack that we live, because you only get one life were always getting older. You want to be able to look back when you’re my age and be like oh yeah. I made really good decisions when i was in high school. So if you want to play sports or learn an instrument or take that family vacation, that should not distract you or you shouldn’t be concerned about your long term goals of becoming a position or farmer search of whatever the case may be. Second, i recommend people think about your. Why, as you’re saying hey, i want to be a a veterinarian. Well, why do you want to be a veterinarian? You know, maybe you really enjoy animals, maybe really enjoy your biology class in high school and all those are fantastic reasons and they will just grow and develop more over time is never too early to start thinking about this, because, eventually, when you’re applying to professional schools, you’re going to have to put this in a letter and a personal statement, you have to write down information and tell about yourself and why you want to go into this professional school, whether its medical school pharmacy, school dentistry. You have to be able to talk about that and a very descriptive heloped fashion for folks in high school, considering careers in the health professions make sure you’re choosing the right courses at the moment, so, whether that’s a ap, course’s, honors, some hands on laboratory experiences, make sure you’re working hard and setting yourself up because, of course, the next step from high school is college and you want to be able to get into the appropriate college one. That’s right for you that helps you meet your goals. Maybe that college is associated with a medical school or a veterinarian school. Maybe it’s in a specific part of the country. Different schools can be more or less challenging to get into so having your high school course is set up and touch away. You’ll have an easier time get into those programs and thus going on to where you want to be in life with professional school. So choose those right courses, finally or not. Finally, but you can look for summer opportunities, so the national institutes of health is kind of the national live national science organization. There is, i think, thirty, five or forty different laboratory building set up on this campus is outside of washington dc. They have summer programs where, if you go on the website, you can sign up as a high school student as a college student and even as a resident to go out there and do research that let you get some hands on experience that will help you with the applications process as well. Other colleges, medical schools, have organizations and have programs set up for high school students specifically to get experience. My buddy dr bren stevens. He has an organization young docks dc, which focus is on young black males in high school and giving them experience and the health professions and getting that exposure again. This gives you some stuff that you can talk about when you’re writing your personal statement and when you’re really telling somebody else, you know why did you decide to go into this this health care related field? In addition to you, looking for these summer opportunities, you can start to learn how to manage a busy schedule so, whether that’s getting that part time job, whether that playing sports learning an instrument doing our tc or darts whatever it is in high school, realize that as you’re balancing that busy schedule, because yes for schedule, can get very busy you’re going to be focusing and learning time management skills were going to be invaluable when you get to college and when you go to medical school or professional school, so those extra cricket activities are going to be incredibly important to the success of your career and finally, as you’re coming out of high school, you can look at ds, md programs, their bachi science combined doctorate degrees. So different, there’s actually a fair amount of these programs. Here’s even tsar degrees. I just found out about that that’ll, be on the episode, the near future of black ais podcast, where i speak with the pharmacist who did this combined program where it was six years to complete college as well as pharmacy school? Similar programs exist for dintistry, as well as for medical school. So if you really know that medicine is right for you, you can come right out of high school, go into a vsd program or bs ds program where you do two years of college and then essentially start that professional degree. You can knock it all out in six years, really kind of put you ahead. It helps you save some money so for all the high schools out there first and form us again. I say don’t stress over this and don’t allow this to affect your quality of life, but if you know or you’re pretty sure that health professions is what’s for, you go ahead and one enjoy your life. Think about why this field is for you to make sure you’re choosing to right courses that you take in high school. Your honors courses and ap courses look at the summer opportunities, whether it’s the nih or your local, whether it’s your local college, that they have a course or whether it’s just shadowing with the local doctor’s office, can then look into these ds md or these combined program, so for all this high school students out there. Thank you so much for tuning in. I definitely send any ms or questions that you have and i can answer the those further in this office hours addition to the blackdog podcast and then tuned into monday’s episode of the black doctors podcast, where i do talk with a pharmacist who is doing some pretty incredible things, we were a kid howard at the same time, together we finish in to us and fourteen from grad school. So thanks for tuning in and stay tuned for morbes office hours, let me know what you think: leave a rating review all that stuff on the podcast. Thank you guys for your support. I do this all free for you guys and it’s really good feedback, though so, thankfully, it’s making a difference in helping to pokes a