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Ryan MacDonald
S.T.R.I.V.E. Lakeland Graduate
At Mayo Clinic
I applied to 17 schools for medical
school and interviewed at four before I withdrew my application, turned
down the rest of the interviews, and accepted an appointment at Mayo.
Since arriving at Mayo I have been developing my research interests in
cardiovascular medicine and valvular heart disease. Also I've become
very interested in congenital heart disease. I had the opportunity to
write and help with several research studies varying in scope from case
reports, to retrospective chart reviews, to prospective studies of
thromboprophylaxis of implantable valves in swine.
In the third year of medical school we rotate through several clinical
"clerkships" including internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, OB/Gyn,
Psychiatry, and Family med. These electives are very educational and
take place in both the inpatient and outpatient setting. In addition we
have a little bit of research and elective time. I was awarded a
scholarship through the American association of thoracic surgeons to
work for 8 weeks at the Mayo Division of Cardiovascular Surgery. This
was an exciting opportunity for me and I was able to scrub many open
heart surgery cases, including congenital heart cases.
Probably the biggest contribution to my elementary and high school
education was STRIVE. I’ve told you this before, but I think that STRIVE
really gave me a good group of friends who were similarly oriented
intellectually, and gave me the opportunity to work creatively with
them. When I approach problems, I don’t look at the problem, I look for
solutions, and solutions in many forms. STRIVE was all about finding
alternative solutions to problems and that has served me very well so
far in medicine.
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Contact Beth
Brubaker at
bbrubaker@lakeland272.org for more info.
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