Leading the Future: Here We Go, We Are Prep Medico
Greetings from Prep Medico!
My name is Cynthia Orozco and I am a college junior attending UC Merced. In college, I am majoring in Public Health and am looking for a position that will allow me to use my collaboration and problem solving skills. Over the past few years, I’ve been strengthening these skills through my internship work at Breakthrough as a Teaching Fellow and Kaiser Permanente, where I hosted informational meetings and taught middle school students. Post-graduation, I’d like to join a top company in the medical industry in hopes of becoming a pediatrician in the future.
This summer, I had the opportunity to participate in a wonderful internship, discovering health policies and the impact on Latino health, assess my leadership skills, as well as develop new skills, and shadow health professionals from UC Davis Medical Center and Kaiser Permanente. Prep Medico is a six-week program that introduced the criteria of what it takes to step your foot into the medical field. The program ensures that we leave feeling more prepared to be excellent physicians in the future by providing a holistic, comprehensive, and culturally responsive view.
Through the six-week program, I had the opportunity to explore a variety of departments during clinical rotations, including shadowing doctors across:
- Internal medicine
- Family medicine
- Physical and occupational therapy
- Pediatrics
- Urology
- Orthopedic surgery
- General Surgery
- Anesthesiology
In the picture to the left, I was shadowing the anesthesiology department along with my peers. I was able to see a pancreaticoduodenectomy, which is an operation to remove the head of the pancreas, part of the small intestine, the gallbladder and the bile duct. I was in awe when I saw the intestines! Being able to shadow surgeons and doctors has allowed me to become even more curious about strategies on how to help my community with my medical degree.
On top of shadowing, the program provided me with CPR certification so that we are able to utilize our skills for future medical internships.
I truly believe that I was able to excel in this internship due to previous experiences through guidance of Students Rising Above. SRA helped me seek out and land awesome opportunities, including a Kaiser Permanente Launch internship, immediately following my senior year of high school. Through the internship, I was able to present a performance improvement project to hospital leadership on internship accomplishments, appropriately coordinated meetings, daily tasks, and education workshops effectively and efficiently. The skills that I learned from the KP Launch Internship, I was able to apply them onto the Prep Medico internship.
SRA has been an amazing resource that continues to provide the best in the sense of helping me realize that I have the potential and the will to be supported through my educational and career journey. I deeply appreciate SRA for always providing 100% dedication in my future. I would highly recommend students to take advantage of the internship opportunities that the career team sends out. Remember to be an avid learner and leader!
