Hi.
My name is Aniqa.
I'm a senior and a religion-biology double major.
So this summer, I spent my time divided between two internships
in New York City.
I'm from Queens, so that solved the housing issue.
The first internship was [INAUDIBLE]
who has a private practice as a pediatric rheumatologist.
And I got into this through the alumni directory,
which took a few attempts.
So if you're ever discouraged from reaching out,
know that you can try again and eventually someone
might answer.
The second internship was at the New Jewish Home,
a hospice where I've been volunteering
at for the past three years.
And thanks to some networking I did during my time there,
I secured an internship working as a [INAUDIBLE] intern
in their [INAUDIBLE].
Spoiler, it wasn't actually Green House,
which for some reason shocked me even though I've
been working there for three years,
there was actually no green house.
But the Green House Project itself is a model
that the NJH is trying to implement
that pushes to transform the way long-term care is approached.
There's a national movement towards model care,
at least as far as corporate nonprofit nursing homes go.
And so there are three core values of this movement.
And they are for elders to live a meaningful life
through the assistance of an empowered staff
and in the context that strives to be [INAUDIBLE]..
The Green House Project at the NJH
is a pilot program that observes the first two missions
because typically the Green House homes are actually
senior houses.
And then NJH is [INAUDIBLE].
It's just like one floor and one [INAUDIBLE]..
So I started out working at the rheumatologist's office
about a month before the hospice.
And so the way they kind of worked out,
the internships ended up staggered.
So there was a period of about four weeks
where I'd be running over from the west side to the east side.
And actually running, because my impeccable judgment
told me it was better to go by foot than it was to take a bus.
So I'd end up arriving at the clinic drenched in sweat,
ready to see the next round of patients, which was great.
But my work at rheumatologist's office
consisted of researching new prescription drugs
on the market, assisting her with blood collections, some
of the preliminary workup, sitting in
on appointments with our patients,
a lot of phone calls with various companies and labs,
and for the parents of particularly
precocious children, babysitting and generally making
sure they stayed alive.
There was this one time that I had to make a diaper run,
and I'm kind of an expert on diapers now.
So if you had any questions about diapers, [INAUDIBLE]..
So diapers are actually the perfect transition point,
because a lot of the dementia patients that I worked with
were, as one might expect, incontinent.
And so they'd wear these incontinence pads.
And there was this one resident in particular
who always after lunch would request
the nurses to change her pad.
It became a daily part of a routine
and if there was ever a disruption,
like say the CNA was busy eating or making medicine rounds,
she would go from staff to staff asking that she be tended to.
She was very alert and oriented after [INAUDIBLE] care,
which wasn't the case for a lot of these residents.
And so the reason I'm telling this story is because my job
as a [INAUDIBLE] intern was to observe and listen and then
report my findings to my director
during weekly staff meetings.
During these periods of observations of the residents,
I would notice these [INAUDIBLE] of each patient.
They had at times discernible and at other times
indiscernible [INAUDIBLE] gradually pick up on.
And in fact, there was a lot [INAUDIBLE]
from observation [INAUDIBLE].
But observation was not enough.
There was this one resident I greeted every morning when
I got off the elevator, because I'd usually find him sitting
by the door [INAUDIBLE].
I won't go into details about this resident, [INAUDIBLE]..
But this one morning, I got off the elevator
and as I greeted him, I turned my back
to speak with one of the CNAs [INAUDIBLE]..
The next thing I knew, he was screaming in my ear in Spanish.
Of the few words and sentences I could make out were,
don't something [INAUDIBLE] rude girl.
The CNA immediately intervened to try and calm
the resident down and simultaneously extricated me
from the situation.
The CNA kept repeating [SPEAKING SPANISH] She
doesn't know.
Moments like these tend to have an impression,
especially when you're so violently jarred
from complacency.
And moments like these also existed in my time
with the rheumatologist.
Like for example, when physicians referred
to the receptionists as assistants
and at times patients as incompetent or poorly educated.
Or a level of ignorance towards a few minority working class
patients that their identities might
come with many social barriers that prevent them
from accessing certain resources.
Or when a CNA would refuse to teach a resident how
to take a picture with a camera, because it would inconvenience
her in the long run.
A part of me greatly admired what these health care
professionals took on and the challenges
that these health care professionals took on
and what they confronted every day.
But part of me was also disappointed
in the health care culture I was being inoculated in.
The performance of ritual indoctrination
that somehow made me complicit to their actions and judgments.
The CNA was right.
I didn't know.
But now that I knew that I didn't know,
I had an obligation to.
I left my comfort zone for the second time
that summer when I approached that yelled
at me for the first time.
The first time was when I [INAUDIBLE]
brought up [INAUDIBLE] action to the rheumatologist
when we were talking about patient backgrounds.
So I insisted to the resident that we communicate in English
because my Spanish was subpar and far from conversational.
And so in English he told me about his life,
the country he left behind, and the brother who was actually
a cousin, who would visit him every so often,
he'd bring him two bottles of beer.
He told me about respect in his culture and incidentally
that the one thing he hasn't been
able to tolerate since coming to America, some 20 years ago
was when someone turned their back on an elder, which
he called the highest form of disrespect.
So [INAUDIBLE] summer [INAUDIBLE],, in particular
to be a physician.
But this summer also made me wonder
about the true nature of the responsibilities [INAUDIBLE]..
There is a need for the role of the physician
to be much more dynamic than as it exists today in the present.
As to what that will look like going forward,
I'm still figuring it out.
And I'd like to thank [INAUDIBLE] who
was the rheumatologist, [INAUDIBLE] who
were my directors at NJH and [INAUDIBLE]..
[APPLAUSE]