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medical school office of admissionsTestimonialsThe School of Medicine's past is filled with names that we still recognize today -- Wayne Babcock, Chevalier Jackson, William Parkinson, Sol Sherry, Waldo Nelson. They are the Temple “greats,” the people who not only shaped the lives of generations of Temple medical students, but also helped put the school on the map.
But instead of looking into the past for this story, we’ve decided to look into the future. Below you will find profiles on a handful of Temple University School of Medicine's recent graduates. We think you’ll find that they’re as smart, well qualified and eager to learn as any in Temple’s history. And who knows, 100 years from now the names of these students just may join the ranks of Temple “greats.”
Most surgeons don’t get to perform surgery until at least their mid 20s.
Suzanne Basha started a bit earlier.
With the words “Mommy, I did surgery!” Suzanne held out a “surgically” divided worm to her mother at the age of four. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
“While other kids were watching Sesame Street, I was watching videos of my father’s surgeries,” says Basha, whose father is a neurosurgeon in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. “Instead of reading bedtime stories, my mother would read me her biology notes when she was studying to be a lab technician.
“Science and medicine have been a huge part of my life from early on, but I never felt pushed into it by my parents.”
By third grade, Basha was doing seventh-grade science. She began volunteering at the local hospital in junior high. At 16, she observed her first surgery, a disk removal. But it was an event in high school that truly convinced her that medicine was the road she would take.
“We had a follow-your-parents day in high school, so I followed my father into surgery,” she says. “He operated on a woman who had been mute for six months because of a tumor that affected the speech area of her brain. Since she couldn’t talk, my father used hand signals to communicate with her. Because the removal of the tumor might not have left enough brain tissue for her speech to return, my father and the patient agreed to use the same hand signals after surgery.
“When the woman came out of surgery and woke up, my father asked her if the felt OK. Instead of using the agreed upon hand signal, however, she opened her mouth and said, ‘I feel great.’
“I could see the dramatic and immediate affect my father had on this woman’s life and I remember thinking that this is what I wanted to do.”
After finishing up her undergraduate work at Penn in three years -- “I couldn’t wait to get to the good stuff” -- Basha came to Temple. Her interests were in neuroscience and spent last summer working in a Temple neuro lab learning techniques and performing research.
After graduation, Basha plans to enter private practice. She also plans to continue the work of her father, who travels to the Middle East for two weeks each summer to provide free care for those who can’t afford it.
“I’m ready to get out there right now,” says Basha, who can’t hide her excitement about medicine.
“Give me a scalpel and I’m happy.”
Worms of the world beware.
Megan Werner grew up on a farm, but it’s the inner city that calls to her today.
Werner, who earned a medical degree and a master’s degree in public health at Temple, spent her childhood on a farm outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania. It’s where she got her first taste of medicine.
“I think that watching the life cycle of animals on the farm got me interested in biology,” she says.
But attending medical school wasn’t her first thought after high school. Instead, she earned an undergraduate degree in biology from Brown University. After college, she worked as a consultant for three years in the Rhode Island Department of Health. During those years, she did a little bit of everything, including regulation writing.
“I’m glad I did that because it gave me a perspective we don’t get in medical school,” says Werner. “It was neat to see how everything works in the real world.”
Her work in Rhode Island also led her to develop an appreciation for the struggles a medically underserved population goes through.
“I developed an interest in how your immediate environment affects your health,” she says. “I found that there were so many doctors and so much technology out there, but people still weren’t getting adequate medical care.”
Werner attended Temple on a National Health Service Corp scholarship. After graduation, she must spend four years working in an underserved area of the country.
“I don’t know where I’ll end up,” she says. “Rural North Dakota, rural Alabama, an urban area of a city.”
Wherever she lands, Werner plans to get involved with health promotion on a community level.
“I want to work in a community health center and work with public health policy,” Werner says. “I hope that in my career I can make changes in how we arrange our social services...get involved with who gets what.
“I find that people spend a lot of time talking about problems. The trouble is getting people to do something...anything! At some point in my day I need to accomplish something...see a child and immunize him. Hopefully I’ll look back on my medical career someday and realize that I impacted the lives of families and helped improve their health.”
James Lee didn’t spend every weekend of his childhood in the hospital because he was sick. He was there to follow his dad around.
”My father is an orthopedic surgeon so I spent 20 years tagging along on rounds with him,” says Lee, whose mother is a nurse. “Growing up, I figured I’d either be a doctor or play in the NBA!”
Unfortunately for NBA fans everywhere, the closest Lee ever got to the pros was Division III Emory University where he played basketball and earned an undergraduate degree in biological anthropology. “I was always interested in the evolution of the human body,” he says.
Thanks to his experiences with his father, Lee came to Temple with a general idea of what being a doctor involved. But it was still an adjustment.
“I went from thinking ‘I’ll never get this’ to ‘I think I’m getting the hang of it’ ” Lee says. “I’ve grown comfortable in the hospital and with my interaction with patients. I really appreciate the way we’ve been trained.”
While at Temple, Lee became involved with the Student National Medical Association, an organization that helps meet the needs of minority medical students. He became president of the Temple chapter in his second year, later rising to regional director overseeing association activities in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.
Now that he’s graduated, you might think that Lee is ready to move into his career and out of the shadow of his father. You’d be wrong.
“My number one goal is to someday work with my father,” says Lee, who wants to become an orthopedic surgeon like his father. “I would love to practice with him.”
Lee would also love to follow in his father’s footsteps in another area. Once a month, Lee’s father travels to Freeport, Bahamas, to work in a clinic providing mostly free care.
“When my father goes to the Bahamas, he is the only orthopedic surgeon on the island,” says Lee. “He treats everything from ankle sprains to trauma. It’s something I’d like to do too.”
After graduation, Lee took a symbolic step toward practicing medicine when the elder Dr. Lee was able to reach out his hand and say, “Congratulations, Dr. Lee.”
The NBA doesn’t know what it’s missing.
Benjamin Paul had wanted to be a rock musician since he was 13.
Reality hit around age 18.
“I realized that being a rock star probably wouldn’t work out,” laughs Paul, who played guitar in bands in high school and college.
After accepting the fact that world tours and screaming groupies weren’t in his future, Paul had to figure out what he was going to do after high school. Instead, Paul graduated from the MD/PhD Program at the School of Medicine.
“I was on a train and I picked up a copy of Life magazine that had a story about Interplast, a group of doctors who travel to third-world countries to provide free plastic surgery,” he says. “I had never considered going into medicine, but I thought that sounded neat.”
As an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Paul considered a major in art and pre-med with the idea of going into plastic surgery. But like his rock-and-roll dream, this too changed.
“The first thing I dropped was art,” he says. “The major was totally impacted and understaffed. But I liked biology and after my first experience scuba diving in the Monterey Bay I changed my major to marine biology.”
After college, Paul took a year off to study in Israel. That’s where he began working with a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“I had decided that I wanted to work in an Israeli research lab and Dr. Oded Khaner was looking for some help. His lab focused on avian developmental biology. I soon became very adept at microdissection as well as cracking eggs and flawlessly separating the white from the yolk!”
A passion was quickly born which eventually led him into a subsequent research position at UCSF, and then into the physician scientist training program at Temple.
“I found out I really enjoy research,” he says. “It’s an endless puzzle to be figured out, a model that you’re constantly building. It’s a great outlet for creativity, something that allows you to prove an answer where one doesn’t exist. When it all comes together it’s extremely rewarding.”
Paul won two awards in the School of Medicine’s annual Medical Student Research Day. His research as a student concentrated in platelet biochemistry and P2 receptor signal transduction. In 2000, he finished his PhD in Pharmacology with three published papers, two of which were in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Upon graduation with both his medical and graduate degrees, his plans are then to undergo residency training in anesthesiology.
“Anesthesiology appeals to me because it’s a specialty that really understands pharmacology,” he says. “It’s a good combination of science and patient contact.”
And his future?
“I’d like to someday have a basic science position as well as a clinical appointment,” he says. “Medicine gives me the chance to directly benefit people’s lives through a very tangible experience. However, medicine is very much about following protocols and established guidelines. Research is more about creativity and following a path into the unknown.”
Kyoko Pena is a note taker.
Whenever she has an idea or sees something she wants to remember, she jots it down in a notebook or on a scrap of paper. And if she has her way -- and believe me, she fully intends to -- all of the ideas on all of those notes will someday become reality.
Pena’s determination isn’t surprising when you realize she applied to medical school three times before being accepted.
“I had given up on medical school,” says Pena, the daughter of a Cuban mother and El Salvadorian father, who grew up in upstate New York. “But I decided to try one more time, took the MCAT and was accepted at Temple.”
By that time, Pena -- who describes herself as the “opposite of negative” -- had already earned her undergraduate biology degree with an emphasis in animal behavior and her master’s degree in public health.
“I wouldn’t have half the experience I have now if I had gone right to medical school,” she says.
Her focus during her graduate studies was women of color in urban communities. Her interest in this area of study grew out of her experiences growing up.
“I didn’t know many people like myself while growing up in upstate New York,” she says. “It was difficult fitting in and I felt like we were discriminated against.”
At Temple, Pena got involved with many student organizations and was a member of the Policy Committee for the American Academy of Family Practitioners. The committee helped her “learn how things are done” and laid the groundwork for her plans after medical school.
“I want to open a clinic so women can have a safe place to go for ‘one stop shopping’ when it comes to their health,” says Pena. “It would be bilingual and include OB services, social workers, HIV education, STD services...a whole range of options women in urban areas don’t necessarily have right now.
“It’s going to happen,” she says. “I just don’t know when or how.”
Opposite of negative indeed.
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