The Class of 2018’s Anne Byrd Mahoney describes her medical school experience in the fall issue of RAMifications, the Richmond Academy of Medicine’s newsletter.
Her mother’s a pediatrician but that didn’t stop a young Anne Byrd Mahoney from rebelling against trips to the doctor’s office. “I can remember screaming and crying when the nurse asked me to read the eye exam chart, thinking that if I stalled long enough I wouldn’t have to get a shot at the end of my visit.”
In a first-person article in the fall issue of the Richmond Academy of Medicine’s newsletter, Mahoney recounts her change of heart. Opportunities to shadow a heart surgeon and a family practice doctor during her senior year of high school definitively sparked her interest in a medical career.
She entered the medical school with the Class of 2018 last fall and is now a student representative on the Richmond Academy of Medicine’s board of trustees. In her newsletter article she gives readers a view of what medical school is like today as students face the prospect of a cap on residency positions, medical school debt and uncertainty surrounding the Affordable Care Act.
Despite those challenges, “Each day, the reality that I get to learn and be a part of medicine gives me a jolt of energy that’s more powerful than anything I might buy at Starbucks.”
Mahoney got further confirmation she’s on the right track this past summer when she spent two weeks working in a medical clinic in Peru.
“My experience there made me realize that all of the tough days in medical school are worth it,” she wrote. “Every second spent scrutinizing the minute details of human physiology or of mechanisms of action of this and that drug is worth it. Any uncertainty about what lies ahead was negated by the passion I felt while working with patients.”
Mahoney is a native of Richmond and the daughter of housestaff alumna Rhoda Mahoney who practices with Pediatric Associates of Richmond. You can read Anne Byrd Mahoney’s first-person account in the fall issue of RAMifications, the Richmond Academy of Medicine’s newsletter.