Students learn to provide health care

By Keith Purtell

With an urgent need for more physicians and nurses, job shadowing helps ensure today’s medical students are quality health care providers tomorrow.

Two young people are spending several weeks of their summer under the wing of Dr. Gary Lambert. They have also volunteered at Good Shepherd Clinic.

Claire Lukeman, 24, of Tulsa said she has been interested in helping people through medicine since she was young.

“My grandfather was a family physician and I looked up to him,” she said. “I always wanted to do something in the medical field. I like the way a doctor can have a one-on-one relationship with their patient and know the patient trusts them.”

Following Lambert through his daily rounds has been an eye-opening experience.

“Shadowing has definitely shown me how much patience doctors must have with everything they encounter, whether it’s dealing with non-compliance, insurance problems, or issues at the hospital,” Lukeman said.

Lukeman’s first-year coursework so far at Oklahoma State University College have been classroom only. She expects this real-life experience to illuminate her studies.

“I’m just grateful I’ve had this chance to have this experience that ties this year into next year,” she said. “It’s showing us actual problems. We get to see everything first hand before we study it in class.”

Lukeman said job shadowing has encouraged her to learn how to relate to patients.

“Dr. Lambert has taken us under his wing and shown us what a good small-town doctor should be like,” she said.

Seth Tudor of Muskogee, 23, said the program at the Oklahoma State University College of Osteopathic Medicine is two years in the classroom, then the two years of clinical work. Job shadowing between the first and second years provides a clinical preview.

“And, they realize Oklahoma is primarily a rural state,” Tudor said. “This gives us a chance to study in a rural setting. The school realizes that rural areas are often under-represented.”

Lambert said medical students who job shadow are more likely to recognize normal and abnormal and know what to do when they have their own patients.

“What you do with a medical student is you tell the patient that I’m going to tell the students what I was thinking and I don’t want the patient to take this as something they would normally have to own,” he said.

Lambert said the nature of medicine is such that job shadowing is easy to accommodate.

“Fundamentally, what I do is do my regular day, and then as I go through the day, impart my philosophy of practicing or why I do what I do,” he said. “The natural course of practicing medicine lends itself to many opportunities for imparting those ideas that I’ve had imparted to me over the years.”

Working with Lukeman and Tudor has also been very encouraging. Lambert said he believes the current generation of medical students is extremely bright.

“If all the students are like Claire and Seth, medicine will be in good hands,” he said.



Reach Keith Purtell at 684-2925 or kpurtell @muskogeephoenix.com.

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