{"id":26013,"date":"2023-05-30T15:33:45","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T19:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=26013"},"modified":"2023-05-31T15:04:24","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T19:04:24","slug":"mayx-snapshot-emergency-caregivers-diagnose-societal-ills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/mayx-snapshot-emergency-caregivers-diagnose-societal-ills\/","title":{"rendered":"MayX Snapshot: Emergency caregivers diagnose societal ills"},"content":{"rendered":"

May Experience 2023<\/a>
\nRead more stories >><\/a><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Course:<\/h4>\n

The Emergency Department as a Microcosm of Society<\/em><\/p>\n

Instructors:<\/h4>\n

Page Bridges \u201908 and Mark Pittman \u201907, emergency medicine physicians<\/em><\/p>\n

Description:<\/h4>\n

By critically evaluating the patients, staff and care provided in the emergency department, students will gain insight into the current state of our society and identify areas for positive engagement.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A hospital\u2019s emergency department is \u201cone of the last places where everyone is equal, at least in theory,\u201d said Page Bridges \u201908.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou might have a state senator next to a homeless man, and the person that gets seen first is the one who\u2019s got the more acute problem,\u201d said Bridges, an emergency medicine physician and director of the Integrated Practice of Medicine<\/a> curriculum at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville. \u201cWe take care of everyone, and that is kind of unique in society now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bridges and her colleague Mark Pittman \u201907, assistant program director for the Prisma Health Upstate Emergency Medicine Residency<\/a>, have treated people from all walks of life in the ED and seen a wide range of the challenges they face, including social, economic and racial disparities.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the problems of society end up at our doorstep, whether we want them to or not,\u201d said Bridges.<\/p>\n

Real-world ethical quandaries<\/h3>\n

The Furman graduates started having conversations with colleagues at The Institute for the Advancement of Community Health<\/a> about the wide cross-section of problems they saw \u2013 lack of access to health care, gender and sexuality issues, the undocumented status of patients, mental health and substance use, among many others. An emergency department, they realized, would be a great lens through which students could examine many of those problems at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started off as just talking,\u201d said Bridges, \u201cand then all of a sudden, we had a class.\u201d<\/p>\n

During their May Experience class<\/a>, lectures and discussions with experts from community organizations are enhanced when the students actually get into the ED, shadowing care providers and observing real-world cases in a clinical setting, said Pittman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal is for them to see and experience the real-world implications of what we talk about in class,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can be idealistic all day long, and then suddenly you see that real scenario in front of you, and it\u2019s messy, it\u2019s nuanced, it\u2019s difficult. I want them to see the quick decisions we have to make in the moment, but also some of the moral and ethical quandaries we think about for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the solution<\/h3>\n

Learning in a clinical setting prior to applying to medical school appealed to Kyria Santa \u201924, a health sciences major and daughter of an emergency department nurse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this class will help me in the future by teaching me to treat my patients, regardless of my specialty, with empathy, have understanding, and respect their autonomy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been able to learn more about people\u2019s points of view,\u201d said Jasmin Vidal Jose \u201924, a psychology major who also hopes to attend medical school. \u201cThings such as familial issues, legal decisions or lack of resources can affect health care or health care access.\u201d<\/p>\n

The class is useful even for students who don\u2019t plan a career in health care, said Pittman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t want them all to come out and be doctors,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are so many areas to impact positive change.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope they come out more open-minded about people who have walked different paths than they have,\u201d said Bridges. \u201cI almost hope they come out less sure of what they know, seeing the complications of the world, but seeing that there are people who want to help \u2013 and wanting to be part of the solution to what we see.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A May Experience course takes students into the clinical setting to see the real-world implications of social, economic and racial disparities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":26023,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,54,59,48],"tags":[2104],"class_list":["post-26013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-sciences","category-may-experience","category-pre-health","category-psychology","tag-mayx-2023"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}