Rose Engler - Brown University

When I began on my journey to an MD, my primary goal was to acquire a global medical education; I want to learn about cultural diversity and how it affects the human condition so that I can better understand my patients and the meaning of care. I followed this interest to Taiwan in 2019, where I studied Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In TCM, doctors do not treat an illness, but rather a person with an illness. My experience in Taiwan taught me that health care reaches far beyond the physical body and should aim to maintain a delicate harmony between the body and soul. Patient and physician interviews alongside discussions with healers, patient families, and Buddhist monks taught me that one’s mental, physical and spiritual health, society, culture, and environment all affect that harmony, and therefore, should all be cared for. A few months later, I traveled to Israel to conduct research on how internalized stigma affects the quality of life of people who are HIV+. The conglomerate of physician and patient interviews made one thing apparent: that illness has both physiological and psychosocial components that need to be discussed and addressed. This made me realize that in some ways, the goal of western medicine is beginning to align with that of eastern medicine, both approaches searching for harmony. These experiences have allowed me to interweave aspects of various religions, cultures, and values to create a multifaceted medical education that celebrates individualism. I hope to carry this mindset into the medical community when I become a physician with the goal of implementing an integrative medical practice that inspires doctors to tailor their care to their patient’s unique needs. I am incredibly humbled and grateful for the support and generosity of MVYouth. Thanks to their kindness, Brown University has become my incredible beginning, and the world has become my classroom. As we move into the future, I hope that the global community will continue to work together to contain the Coronavirus so that we can all begin to heal and move into our new normal.