Jackson Memorial Hospital Case Study

The first hospital I ever went to in the United States was Jackson Memorial Hospital. I was around 7 to 8 years old, I had only been in this country for 2-3 years, and I went to the Bascom Palmer division. At this point, my mother did not speak English, and I was getting to the point of being fluent but still struggled with the language. Scared and in awe, I remember feeling like I wanted to be a part of something like this institution one day. I was impressed by everything around me, and I remember looking at the doctors with a sense of disbelief. But all of that was in some way blurred by the interaction that I had with my physician. I remember my doctor being rude with my mother and frustrated by her language barrier, and I remember her

being dismissive of me; another physician would eventually accurately diagnose me. The reality is that stories like these in Miami are abundant, and they are not particular to the wonderful institution that I later found Jackson Hospital to be. I heard stories like these from friends, family, and experienced many other situations like these with my mother. Treating a predominantly Hispanic population is undoubtedly difficult, but having grown up in Miami and being a fluent Spanish speaker, I want to be able to serve the community that gave so much to me.
As a physician, I hope to one day be involved in making personalized medicine initiatives accessible to minorities – mainly Hispanic/Latinx communities. Because of this, I see the University of Miami's medical school as an ideal location to achieve these goals. Throughout my medical school career, I hope to not only gain a medical vocabulary in English but Spanish as well. I feel that the demographics of Miami are an ideal place to do this, and I would intend to volunteer with the DOCS organization. In addition to this, the masters in genetics that the University of Miami is an academic opportunity that I would be excited to take advantage of. I believe that taking into consideration the environment that patients are in along with their genetics holds a lot of promise for the medical field, and I hope to one day be able to be an active agent in bringing these advances to underserved communities.