About a year or so ago, I found myself in the office of the pre-health advisor at UW Bothell. This was my first appointment with her since fully deciding that I wanted to be a physician. During our meeting we discussed the classes I should take, extracurricular activities that I’m interested in, and what being pre-med would mean for me. Near the end of our meeting she showed me a flyer that had the letters SHPEP written on it and suggested that I should try applying for the program the following year (since I had nearly missed the deadline for that year). When I first heard of SHPEP I did not have very much confidence that I would be selected to attend the program, but I told myself that I would still apply anyway because it was something productive that I could spend my summer doing. This summer, I had the privilege of attending the Summer Health Professions Program (SHPEP, previously known as: Summer Medical and Dental Education Program or SMDEP) at the UW Seattle campus. This was an intensive 6-week long program with the purpose of preparing pre-health students succeed at getting into a professional school and becoming a health professional. SHPEP has several different pathways that you can apply to including: medicine, dentistry, optometry, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and physician assistant. SHPEP has different sites around the U.S. but the pathways they offer vary, for example I took part in the SHPEP program at the University of Washington and this site offered the medicine, dentistry, and public health pathways. But, if you were interested in the optometry pathway, then you would want to apply to the Western University of Health Sciences and University of Alabama Birmingham sites (more about where to apply if you’re interested in a certain program can be found here). I will be focusing the majority of this post on the medical pathways because this was the pathway that I was in, but I can also give a little insight on the dentistry and public health pathways.

There were several parts to this program but the main categories included: career prep, pathways, science/math classes, shadowing, and career exploration. My favorite part of the program by far were the shadowing days. A few weeks prior to the program we were assigned to a physician or a few physicians (dentists or public health sites if those were your pathway) which we would shadow, to see what being in that professional position would be like. Before SHPEP, I did not have the chance to shadow, so going into the program would be the first time that I would be able to shadow a physician. I was assigned to three hospitalists (doctors who take care of you while you’re an inpatient in the hospital) at Harborview Medical Center. Prior to this experience I had spent time being a COPE Health Scholar, which although rewarding in many aspects, I did not thoroughly enjoy for several reasons. Because of my previous experience volunteering in a post surgery wing of a large hospital, I thought I would not enjoy the experience of shadowing hospitalists of a big city hospital whose patient population was not one many would want to work with. HMC is located in downtown Seattle, being in a big city means you get just about everything through those doors. The first day of shadowing I came in with a bit of a negative idea of what it would be like to be in a big hospital again, but I had no idea what it would be like to be in the position of the physician with the responsibility of several lives on their shoulders. I had no idea that the role was so interdisciplinary, and required more soft skills like empathy, listening, and compassion rather than hard science. I was extremely fortunate to shadow three physicians who showed a tremendous amount of passion for their work, and who inspire me to one day be that type of physician to my future patients.

Another aspect of the SHPEP program included being divided up into our respective pathways and having guest speakers like physicians and deans of admission from the medical school. During this time we were able to ask any questions that we may have had about the application process to medical school, what medical school will be like, and what is expected of a “good applicant”. The end-goal of the program is to motivate participants and prepare them to attend a professional school and then serve “disadvantaged” populations.

One of the greater parts of the program were the science and math classes offered by SHPEP. These classes were not classes that you could take for credit, they’re designed to enhance your knowledge in these topics, or to serve as an intro to a class with low stakes. It is a low stake environment, because all of the “graded” work does not end up on your transcript. The quizzes and exams that were taken throughout the courses were to help us see where we were in our learning and where we could improve. The science classes offered at UW SHPEP 2018 were General Biology (with an emphasis on anatomy and physiology of humans), General Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry. The math classes offered to all of us was Bio Statistics with a brief introduction to R (a programming language that is often used for statistics). All the classes were taught very well, the only drawback was that the classes were early, and began promptly at 8:30 every morning.

Every Tuesday we had the opportunity to try out a new or familiar healthcare/science related activity. These Tuesday activities included: a dental simulation, a nursing simulation, a tour/walk through and hands on activities in a research lab, as well as a CPR class where we could get CPR certified by the end of it. The dental and nursing simulations were my favorite Tuesday activities, I enjoyed the dental simulation so much that I considered dental school for a second (but my heart belongs to medicine). In the dental simulation we were able to make molds of teeth, build teeth (out of wax), and learn how to suture. In the nursing simulation we were able to listen to our heartbeats using ultrasound and a stethoscope, we were also able to take the blood pressure of each other and participate in a “coding simulation”. In this simulation, our “patient” was a mannequin that could breathe and we could take vitals from. The purpose of the simulation was to show us what it would be like to have our “patient’s” heart stop and have us respond to it (we were all safely guided through the process and were able to revive our mannequin). I think this aspect of the program was really good for people who may still have been on the fence about what healthcare career path they wanted to go into.

SHPEP was an incredible intellectually stimulating program, but it was also overall a really fun time and worth spending 6-weeks worth of your summer attending. The administration at UW SHPEP made sure that all the scholars felt welcome and part of a community. We had a lot of community building time and outdoor activities together. Some of these community building activities included a hiking trip to Mount Rainier National Park, a Fourth of July picnic at Golden Gardens, and town hall meetings every week where we could discuss how the previous week had gone and where we could improve. SHPEP was also able to provide a stipend for the program and payed for most meals and our entire stay. If you were to apply to a SHPEP program that is out state then your travel would be mostly if not completely paid for, which makes the opportunity even more appealing.

I would say that this has been so far one of the best and most productive summers of my life. I’ve reaffirmed my passion for medicine, I’ve expanded my network and made good mentors, and I had a lot of fun doing it. I would strongly recommend applying for SHPEP and attending if you have the chance if you’re interested in healthcare. A very important piece of advice I can give, is to apply early and get everything sorted out ASAP. Once you’re in the program you will also need to send in immunizations and other forms, you will also want to get this done ASAP or you could risk being dropped from the program or unable to shadow while you’re there.

One of the biggest takeaways I got was that there is no single “perfect” application, and everyone’s path will vary. This message can be used by anyone attempting to apply to a professional school, and really anyone alive in general. Everyone’s path is going to vary so we should focus more on ourselves rather than compare ourselves to others. My path from here on forward is my own to make, but the tools that SHPEP has made me more confident than ever that I will be a physician one day. I’ve also been inspired by the wonderful doctors that I’ve shadowed, to maybe even be a hospitalist (something I had thought I’d crossed off my list already). If I had not taken the risk and applied for this program, I would not be as motivated as I am now to keep going. It is important to believe in yourself and listen to the people around you who believe in you too, use this to achieve things you thought were impossible and continue to have faith in yourself.