Exploring the world of medicine
January 21, 2015
The BSM Medical Club presents its members with opportunities to expand their knowledge of the diverse medical field. This school year, the members have listened to speakers, experimented in labs and dissections, and participated in activities spanning health-related topics such as plastic surgery, pathology, dentistry, pharmacy, physiology.
In December, a group of nine Medical Club members visited the University of St. Thomas. To experience what a job in the exercise physiology field would be like, members measured their body fat percentage with a caliper and then tested the Bod Pod, the most accurate machine for calculating a person’s body fat percentage.
“We did it by hand with a caliper and figured out the difference between the two, and how close we were to the bod pod’s measurement. We were actually all really close; we were all like five to six percent of what our actual results were,” sophomore member Amira Carter said.
Senior Will Duda established the Medical Club last year and appointed Ms. Jennifer Roushar as its advisor. Duda created the club because of the lack of science-based extracurriculars at BSM and his own interest in the subject. “At one time, there were only science classes but nothing extracurricular to do for students like me, who were interested in learning about the medical field. The goal is really just to learn more,” Duda said.
The members of the Medical Club can also get connected with job opportunities. The Medical Club has a wide range of experiential options to become further involved in a career path one is interested in. “We have job shadows or field trips for members where they can go and experience that hands-on, in-the-real-world type stuff,” Duda said.
The members of Medical Club sample jobs from a plethora of medical fields in order to expand their knowledge and foster their interest in one specific field. “Medical club is just to expand the knowledge about the medical field in case you’re interested. They just want to teach us more about medicine and help us figure out if you want to do it as a career or not,” sophomore member Holly Caboti-Jones said.
The goal of the Medical Club is to give students exposure to a career path they’re interested in that they wouldn’t otherwise get. “If you want to know more about medical fields, it’s the perfect club. It’s not that big of a time commitment, you’re going to get out what you put into it,” Medical Club captain Will Duda said.
With over seventy members, the Medical Club is fulfilling its goal of educating those interested in medicine and its diverse career options, as well as giving the members opportunities to gain first-hand scientific experiences “I really just want to experience it; it sounds like a really cool opportunity to see what else there is in medicine,” Carter said.