Editor, Medical Student
Florida International University Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine
Greetings! I am a fourth year medical student at FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. I received by bachelor's degree with a major in Biomedical Sciences and minor in Psychology from the University of South Florida. I am excited to highlight student voices through narrative medicine with Mosaic in Medicine. This is a great opportunity to incorporate humanities and medical education through reflective writing, hearing and telling stories, and sharing world views. I love reading, nature and dogs!
Fourth-year medical student Bianca Nguyen likens one of her doctor-patient relationships to a blueprint on how to refine the skill of negotiation as a health care provider. Read more to find out the pearls she gleaned from these encounters.
Medical student Lewis Wong describes what he gleaned from a seemingly run-of-the-mill clinical encounter with a 14-year-old refugee in his pediatric rotation, and how this sparked introspection into the lessons learned along his medical school journey as well as the core values he hopes to imbue as a community physician.
“Medicine is about so much more. Medicine includes teaching, caring and sharing empathy with others.” Read more to hear about how Negin Khosravi’s experience with one of her pediatric patients and her stuffed animal reignited her passion for medicine.
“After the surgery, I could, at last, bolt out the door to play with Andrew and those other boys. I could run wild. I could finally be a normal kid.” Medical student Varun Jain takes the reader into his past and dives into the associated challenges and emotions associated with living with and overcoming a heart condition.
After learning that her father was diagnosed with COVID-19, medical student Catherina Lubin ruminates on her deepest thoughts, emotions and perspectives as a medical professional and, despite this gut-wrenching reality, how she ultimately found reaffirmation of the quintessential quality, which makes us uniquely human: hope.
This sequence of events took place during my second clerkship, OB/GYN, and I knew there was no way I couldn’t write about it. I wrote this for my own catharsis but it also reaffirmed the importance of compassion, competency and awareness in medicine.
As a young immigrant from the Philippines, medical student Russyan recounts his journey, through verse, from his village to medical school and the challenges, lessons and values learned along the way.
Showing love in times of loss, being a beacon of hope, taking time to spend with family and regaining our humanity are just some of the values medical student writer Karl Heward emphasizes should be reflected in our practice of medicine while demonstrating how personal tragedy courageously inspired him to adopt this mindset.
There is something honorable about any career and focusing on that positive aspect is what we should all strive to do. The world works on a balance with each profession having its own significance and place. Sometimes we just needed to be happy with our choice, and live life as it comes.
We are taught about the social determinants of health in the first week of medical school. That things like finances, job stress, education, safety, and environment, often have as much an impact on health as does pathophysiology.
We are proud to announce the founding of Mosaic in Medicine, an online peer-reviewed publication for underrepresented voices in medicine. We founded this publication to shine a light on the issues and difficulties that we face as underrepresented individuals in medicine. Our experiences as unheard voices in medicine are all too often hidden, overlooked, or unrecognized.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
Albany Medical College
I originally grew up in New Hampshire and then attended college at Emory University, where I earned a B.S. in Biology. I completed a 1-year Master of Science program in Biotechnology and Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences before matriculating to medical school. I am currently an attending physician in Internal Med at David Grant Medical Center California, serving as a Captain in the U.S. Airforce. I have a keen interest in quality improvement and patient safety at a medical education level as well as at a systems implementation level and am involved in research on involving students in the QI processes. My goal, as an Editor-in-Chief, is to represent military medicine and to advocate for this population that I serve