I arrived in Lit­tle Rock, Arkansas on Sun­day the 19th of March, a lit­tle unsure of myself in a part of the coun­try that I haven’t explored very much. I felt wel­come from the first night on, though, after a warm din­ner with fel­low intern Chris Diehl and our Princetern­ship host, Dr. Erika Petersen ‘96(’96). We learned about the oper­a­tions that Dr. Petersen had sched­uled through­out the week and got a taste of her favorite pizza place in Arkansas. Once we had the week out­lined, we started talk­ing about some of our com­mon expe­ri­ences at Prince­ton and what we could look for­ward to in med­ical school.

We started the first day early for me at 6:45 am, but I soon became aware that this was a bit late for by hos­pi­tal stan­dards. Chris and I put on scrubs and met with Dr. Petersen’s patients for the day. Pretty soon I was observ­ing my first surgery, and Dr. Petersen was care­ful to explain what she did and gave us a first­hand view of the pro­ce­dure. I was thor­oughly impressed with the expert knowl­edge of the body that Dr. Petersen dis­played in replac­ing an elec­tronic device that had been implanted in a patient. After fin­ish­ing with the first patient she imme­di­ately got to work on a more com­pli­cated case which made full use of the cut­ting edge tech­nol­ogy of deep brain stim­u­la­tion. The patient whose surgery we observed had a notice­able alle­vi­a­tion of symp­toms for a dis­ease that I did not know could be treated so effec­tively, and I was really impressed to see it. We fin­ished off the day by observ­ing a spinal surgery that made use of another advanced tech­nol­ogy to stay min­i­mally inva­sive while mak­ing a dra­matic inter­ven­tion in the struc­ture of the spine.

On the next day at the hos­pi­tal, we got a broader sur­vey of what sur­geons at UAMS do. We started a bit later than the day before and split up between dif­fer­ent sur­gi­cal teams. Between me, Chris, and Arthur, another stu­dent observ­ing surg­eries for the week, we saw uro­log­i­cal surgery, car­dio­tho­racic surgery, and more neu­ro­surgery. This packed day wrapped up with Dr. Petersen per­form­ing a spine surgery on an awake patient while explain­ing each step to Chris and me. We said good­bye to Dr. Petersen but hung around the surgery wing to observe an open heart surgery. Watch­ing the heart beat inside a patient while the sur­geons went to work was a really inspir­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cially hav­ing stud­ied the heart so much with­out ever see­ing one in action. Later on Dr. Petersen took Chris and me to din­ner at a really impres­sive sushi restau­rant, and we had a good chance to debrief a lot of our expe­ri­ences and get a lit­tle more per­sonal insight on the life story of a doctor.

On the Wednes­day morn­ing of our Princetern­ship Chris and I man­aged to wake up early enough to fol­low the res­i­dents for morn­ing rounds. I’ve heard a lot about the intense lives of res­i­dents, so I was eager to see what things were like first hand. After find­ing our guide, a par­tic­u­larly help­ful res­i­dent named Dr. Gandhi, we started vis­it­ing patients and lis­ten­ing to their symp­toms and sta­tuses. The res­i­dents on rounds dis­played an impres­sive abil­ity to take in and put together a stream of infor­ma­tion about patients that needed diag­no­sis or treat­ment. Refresh­ingly, they all also seemed to enjoy their daily rou­tine a lot, despite the inten­sity of life as a neu­ro­surgery resident.

David, Dr. Petersen, and Chris

Fol­low­ing this, Chris and I observed the removal of a brain tumor by Dr. Day, the chair of neu­ro­surgery at UAMS. We watched him per­form the pro­ce­dure while fol­low­ing the steps in a book describ­ing the pro­ce­dure that a res­i­dent had pro­vided. Toward the end of the surgery we were sur­prised to learn that the author of this text­book was none other than Dr. Day him­self! This was a really art­ful surgery, with a lot to appre­ci­ate how much the patient’s life would improve directly as a result. We ended the day with a visit to Dr. Petersen’s clinic, which really put more of a human face on the prac­tices we had observed. Dr. Petersen seemed to really do her best to explain the tech­ni­cal side of com­plex pro­ce­dures to patients, who in turn really appre­ci­ated the trans­parency and com­pas­sion she showed.

The last day of my Princetern­ship was in some ways the most excit­ing. I was lucky enough to see Dr. Petersen her­self remove a very seri­ous tumor from a patient in a very involved pro­ce­dure which I was able to observe start to fin­ish. Also, Dr. Petersen sent a sam­ple of the tumor down to the hospital’s pathol­ogy unit, and I got a chance to see this other part of the hos­pi­tal as well. The pathol­o­gist there clas­si­fied it and explained what to look for and the sever­ity of dif­fer­ent types of brain tumor. Luck­ily for me, Dr. Petersen fin­ished this very thor­ough tumor removal in time to grab a final bite to eat with me before I made my way to the air­port to fly home.

We ate with Arthur and Dr. Gandhi and had a con­ver­sa­tion that was enlight­en­ing for me about the role of research in med­i­cine. Dr. Gandhi, an MD/PhD who worked on metab­o­lism of neural cells dur­ing his PhD, had a lot of insight to share with me since I’m inter­ested in pur­su­ing an MD/PhD and I’m involved in metab­o­lism research. Dr. Petersen also shared a few thought pro­vok­ing sto­ries about the his­tory and future of neu­ro­surgery research. I left that night with noth­ing but pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences from my Princetern­ship, for which I really have to thank Dr. Petersen for care­fully set­ting up such an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence for under­grads. I would highly rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship to future stu­dents as an oppor­tu­nity to get a first hand view of the prac­tice of med­i­cine and the pos­i­tive things it can bring about.