D.O. or Do Not: The Osteopathic Physician's Journey for Premed & Medical Students

Episode 52: Jann Gael OMS-IV at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest

July 20, 2021 Season 1 Episode 52
D.O. or Do Not: The Osteopathic Physician's Journey for Premed & Medical Students
Episode 52: Jann Gael OMS-IV at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest
Show Notes Transcript

Jann Gael, OMS-IV, is a medical school student at Western University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest. Born in Amarillo, TX, he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor of science in biology before spending several years working at the university as an embryology research assistant. During his time in research, Gael invested his efforts towards fully characterizing fundamental physiological processes necessary for proper human development in the hopes of elucidating mechanisms that could be used to create treatments for congenital disease. Currently, in his role as a medical student, Gael believes that diligence, integrity, and a love of learning will allow him to best serve and support his future patients and peers. Focusing on the flexibility needed to view problems from different perspectives, he holds these values as essential in creating a robust and reliable foundation for treatment plans that can best address a patient’s needs.

Medicine offers the perfect venue in which deductive reasoning and natural curiosity can be used to affect and improve the lives of others more directly. Passionate about the field of pathology, Gael was drawn to the challenge of finding connections between vast amounts of information, the openness to collaboration needed to address a problem from multiple angles, and the critical thinking skills required to be successful in these endeavors.

Alongside his love of science, Gael indulges in his passion for fine arts. Music has always played an instrumental part in Gael’s life, even more so now in the face of COVID. In his spare time, he enjoys performing lullabies on the piano, singing (poorly but enthusiastically) to songs from the last musical he’s seen, or listening to music livestreams as he sketches and writes on his weekend evenings.

Tune in to learn more about Gael’s path to osteopathic medicine, his passion for working with others, and his experiences navigating life and medicine as a transgender medical student.

My name is Dr. Ian Storch.

I'm a board certified gastroenterologist and osteopathic physician, and you are listening

to DO or do not.

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We hope you enjoy this episode.

On today's episode, we speak to Jan Gael, an osteopathic medical student at Western

University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific Northwest.

Gael is a native of Amarillo, Texas and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with

a bachelor's in science and biology.

During this episode, he speaks about his path to osteopathic medicine, interest in pathology,

and his experiences navigating life and medicine as a transgender medical student.

Gael, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you for having me.

I'm really grateful for the opportunity.

I think I was mentioning this to you.

You're the first student that we've actually had on the podcast.

You're the first osteopathic student.

Yeah.

And like I told you before, I'm grateful, but I'm not quite sure why, but I hope I can

be.

Yeah.

And I think that's awesome.

You know, it's so funny.

We've had, you know, we have a website and our listenership is growing and really excited

about all that.

And I've had a lot of students reach out to me and say, listen, I think I would be great

to interview on the podcast and really looking for the osteopathic journey.

So many times I'll talk to them, but ultimately, even though they're really cool and nice and

great, you know, I just don't think that their short journey would add any value to our listeners.

And I appreciate that you're so humble, but I think that you're as well.

Thank you.

I wanted to start by talking about and educating me and the listeners on LGBTQ.

I know that you're not the LGBTQ expert, but can you talk to us about LGBTQ?

Yeah.

So LGBTQ stands for, gosh, I have to go through the letters every time.

No, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, Q can be clear questioning.

And then usually there's a plus nowadays to kind of try addressing all of the other identities

that might fall under that spectrum.

There are different terms being used nowadays, but that one's the main acronym.

You know, it's interesting that it's a lot of different groups put into one category.

Do you think that most people are fine with that or they feel that they should be separated

or?

I think it's not all encompassing per se, but it does address a population that has certain

health needs that aren't necessarily thought of when thinking about other demographics.

Can you start by telling us where you grew up and where you went to school and sort of,

again, obviously I'm interested in the whole LGBTQ perspective.

So your perspective growing up being slightly different and ultimately how you decided on

where you wanted to go to college and what that experience was like.

Yeah.

So I grew up in the Texas panhandle.

I'm actually from Amarillo, Texas.

I graduated in high school in 2012.

Around that time, gay marriage wasn't legal.

People were still kind of hesitant about talking about sexuality and gender.

I didn't know what transgender was until maybe my last semester of high school.

And that's when I realized like, oh, that's probably me.

And so, yeah, kind of rural-ish Texas.

And then for college, one of my best friends in high school was in the year above me.

And I knew I wanted to go to college.

I just wasn't sure where.

And she was like, hey, Gayle, go to UT, UT Austin.

And I was like, all right, that sounds great because Texas, at least when I was in school,

they have this state rule that if you're in the, at least for me, if I was in the top

8% of my class, graduating class, we were guaranteed admission to any public university

in Texas.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

And I had no idea it wasn't a thing until I moved out of Texas.

I think the percentage is a little smaller nowadays, but that's, I applied to UT and

yeah, got in.

I ended up having a really great time there.

I want to rewind.

What was your given name at birth?

And you talked about when you got to high school, you realized you were transgender.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

Usually talking about people's names can be kind of a mess.

I actually liked my first name, Jan.

I like it.

Yeah.

The only reason I kind of, I added Gayle to my list of names before moving to Oregon,

because I didn't sound like this when I started medical school.

Okay.

And so I kept getting called Jane if people didn't hear me correctly, which I didn't particularly

enjoy.

Gayle is more of a, it's like a definitively masculine name.

So I just decided to add it, but yeah.

So growing up, I realized I wasn't straight when I was in middle school.

I just, I didn't know how I didn't really fit in, in that regard, but the, anyone that

I knew.

And in high school, I was actually reading a web comic, oddly enough that had a transgender

character in it and talked about their story.

And as I was reading, I was like, Oh, that fits everything.

Okay.

There's a word for it.

And so that's, that's kind of how I realized I was trans.

I read something online.

So interesting, you know, and again, your story is so endearing and part of the reason

why, you know, we wanted to have you on the podcast, but talked about maybe when problems

maybe going into the bathroom or which bathroom can you talk a little bit about that or explain

that story?

Was that, was that in high school?

Yeah.

No, that was actually in college.

So I, for better or worse, I didn't realize I was trans until I was just about to graduate

high school.

I think high school would have been significantly more difficult for me.

Were that not the case in college?

That's when I began socially transitioning.

So I lived as a man as soon as I started, as soon as I moved away for college.

But that bathroom story comes from my senior year of college, UT Austin's in Austin, which

is a fantastically welcoming city to queer people, unlike unfortunately some other parts

of Texas.

However, when I was a senior in college, that was around the time they were talking about

passing a bathroom bill, which would have made it illegal for transgender individuals

to use the correct restroom.

Unfortunately I knew some people or like a lot of my classmates just used kind of violent

language when talking about what would happen if they found someone, found out someone was

transgender and using the correct restroom.

And not that I was directly threatened or anything, but the threat of violence was there.

It got to the point where I just didn't eat or drink on campus so that I wouldn't have

to use the restroom.

Like I would go the whole day and then I would just go home hungry.

It's pretty awful.

Yeah.

So coming up here to Oregon and my med school, I actually wasn't using the restroom on like

the first month or so, because I wasn't sure.

I wasn't sure if I was going to have to deal with the same thing.

I didn't really want to find out, but I was actually speaking with one of my classmates

about it.

This is funny, he is the sort of person who like you wouldn't think would be terribly

supportive of, I guess, for lack of a better word, I guess, more liberal things, but he

was actually the one who made me feel safe to use the restroom.

He was like, no one really cares here and if they do, like I will talk to them because

that's not okay.

And that's actually one of the reasons why I chose the medical school that I'm currently

at.

I want to, I'm so hard with you to go straight now because there's so much to talk about,

but I definitely want to get there.

Can you tell me, again, I'm going to go back a little bit, like how were your parents when

they found out?

Again, I hope none of this is too personal, if I ask you questions too personal, you can

defer.

No, it's okay.

It's just kind of funny because it's talking about it in a way that's not incredibly alarming.

Like it doesn't, isn't as bad as it could sound, you know?

So like my parents, they're not terribly supportive of it, but for more, it's not that they didn't

like that I was queer because I was queer, it's just the amount of violence, unfortunately,

that is associated with being transgender or just queer in general.

That's what they were afraid of, but I am a first generation American.

Where are your parents from?

The Philippines.

Ah, that's cool.

Yeah.

Are they from Manila or are they from the main city or?

My dad is from a province that's close by and my mom is from further south.

Okay.

Yeah.

They immigrated to New York before they found their way to Texas, so, but yeah.

So I came out to them my third year of college.

They weren't incredibly supportive.

It was kind of more don't ask, don't tell at my house.

So they knew, but they didn't want to talk about it.

And then it's only within the past year actually that it's kind of gotten better.

My parents' main concern was that one, the violence, but also with medically transitioning,

they didn't want me to do it because they didn't want me to suffer academically or have

to drop out of school for it, which is understandable.

So again, I'm going to try to be as linear as possible, but I have so many questions.

So interestingly, and you made a comment that I want to explore a little bit, I get a lot

of suggestions.

We get a lot of people that are suggesting people that we should interview on the podcast

and someone recommended a transgender specialist physician, which sounded really cool, but

unfortunately he was an MD and this is a DO podcast, so he was next, right?

So along those lines, I wanted to ask you, you said your voice was different when you

started medical school.

Do you see a doctor that specializes in transgender?

No.

So one of the incredible things about where I am now in Oregon, Planned Parenthood does

hormone therapy and it was, compared to being in Texas, it was incredibly easy to just set

up an appointment with them and say, hey, like I'm transgender, I'm interested in beginning

hormone therapy.

How do I begin that process?

And they were able to prescribe me testosterone at my first visit with them, which the barriers

to care are vastly different.

It took me from calling to schedule an appointment and seeing a provider two weeks.

In Texas, even in Austin, the main clinic that was doing hormone therapy while I was

down there, the Kine Clinic, the waiting period was three months.

It's a huge, yeah, that's, that's vastly different.

And that's actually one of the reasons I was looking in Oregon because the barriers to

accessing transgender healthcare are significantly lower than Texas.

Yeah.

Super interesting.

So, okay, so now we're going to go back again.

And so you're in college, right?

You're kind of figuring out who you are as a person.

My general question is, when did you decide you wanted to be a physician?

Was it, was it prior to college or was it at that point?

And what was your application process like?

And what schools did you look at?

What were you thinking about when you were applying?

And how did being transgender, obviously you mentioned that that had something to do with

where you were looking to go.

So it's a long question, but tell me when you decided you wanted to be a doctor and

about your journey on picking a medical school from Texas.

Yeah.

So my dad's a physician.

He was foreign trained, but he did his residency in New York.

Well, did an intern year in New York and then ended up doing a residency in Texas.

What kind of doc?

I just, he's an IM doc.

Okay.

I'm an IM doc too.

So that's great.

I think the best he, uh, and he just loves, he loves doing it, loves his patients, loves

the work.

And I think really loves knowing that he can do a lot of good for a lot of people and just

that sort of passion and love for the craft.

I wanted to do it.

Was this since you were a little kid or you're like, I want to be like my dad.

My dad's awesome.

I want to be a doctor too.

Yeah.

I think my dad, I don't know if you do this with your kids, but I think my dad had fun

kind of, uh, I learned like skull bones before I learned colors.

I think that was just his little game.

He played.

Yeah.

So again, I think you're, you're in a little better position than my kids cause I'm a,

I'm a medicine doc, but I'm also a gastroenterologist.

So unfortunate.

So they know rectum sigmoid colon descending colon.

Yeah.

They know every part of the GI tract.

I don't think they could do the skull, so be thankful every day.

But yeah, and I have two other siblings, but I'm the only one that was interested in health

care.

And it was, so it wasn't hard for me to like decide whether or not I wanted to be a doctor

because I saw how happy my dad was doing it.

See, you know, you're all geared up.

You went to school, knowing you were pre-med and then you took the MCAT.

And then can you tell me a little bit about generally like where you applied, what you

were looking at and about osteopathic school specifically?

Yeah.

So I'm not the most tangential or I'm not the most linear person.

I'm a little tangential and same with my path to medicine, but so in Texas, Texas has its

own application system.

So being from Texas, I didn't even look outside the state for medical school initially.

It actually took me three times to get in the first two times I had applied only in

Texas.

I did take the MCAT.

I did decently on it.

My application was fine.

I actually got interviews every time I applied.

I'm just not great at interviewing.

I'm surprised because right now you're doing great.

If I was giving out a position, you would have a position right now.

No question.

Oh, that's so kind.

Now, I think the thing that really got me was being told that my reason for wanting

to do what I wanted to do wasn't good enough.

I know as a pre-med student, being told everyone that goes into medicine wants to help people

and that is people's reason for wanting to do medicine.

And I was told I want to help people and like my dad was a huge inspiration in why I wanted

to go to medicine.

And those were two big things that were really driving initially and constantly I was being

told, well, that's not good enough, which is really frustrating because you get told

that with no suggestion on how to improve.

What I wish I'd been told instead was you're not specific enough because those are two

different things, right?

And so yeah, first two times I only applied in Texas.

I got interviews both times but wasn't accepted.

And then the third time was like, you know what, this is really hard.

If I'm going to apply one more time, I'm going to apply everywhere I can.

So I did Texas, but I also applied on the West Coast.

I applied some places on the East Coast and then I applied to schools that were closer

to the Texas Panhandle, so Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, just in case I could be closer to

my family.

And in the in-between, I was doing research as well.

So it took me three times to apply or three times to get in.

The reason I applied to Oregon schools, just kind of broadly, was that Medicaid in Oregon

covers transitioning.

And I knew that if I were to get into medical school, that particular cycle, I was going

to have aged off my parents' insurance.

And that was the biggest reason why I applied in Oregon for medical school.

In terms of DOMD, I wasn't really looking at one over the other initially.

The thing that really sold it for me, however, was the interview.

I had interviewed at MD schools, I had interviewed at multiple DO schools, but at my school specifically,

I wasn't really sure how to address my gender if it came up.

The first two times I applied to medical school, I had applied as a woman because at my parents'

insistence, you know, med schools, they don't have to tell you why you don't get in.

They just say that you didn't get in.

And so my parents didn't want my gender to be a reason for that.

I think that might have been one of the reasons why I struggled during the interviews, because

I wasn't presenting authentically.

That's hard, right?

You're on the interview actively trying to be somebody that you're not because that's

what it said on your application.

Is that kind of sum it up?

Yeah.

And that's already like, that's not what I wanted to do for my interviews.

I wanted to be, yeah, yeah.

Because I wanted a med school that honored me, and that's what actually made the difference

for me with the medical school I'm at right now.

I wasn't going to bring up my gender, but this was during the interview.

I wasn't going to bring up my gender.

Did you apply as a male or like which circle did you bubble off?

I did apply as a male.

I did apply as a male the third time because I was like, I'm, this application process

is exhausting.

I kind of hate it.

I don't want to do it again.

So I'm just going to put it all out there and see what happens.

That's awesome.

Tell me about the interview.

So I was nervous.

I had already gotten a rejection letter from another school.

So I wasn't feeling great about this interview.

You know, I got asked, of course, like, why Oregon?

You're from Texas.

And I don't even remember the answer I gave initially, but then I got asked, well, you've

got two names on your application.

Why is that?

And I was like, oh no, I wasn't going to bring this up.

But so I figured I might as well, well, I'm transgender and I haven't legally changed

my name yet.

That's why I have two names on my paper.

And I was just like sweating in my seat, like, oh no.

But my interviewer said, oh, we love that.

That's great.

And I have never felt so safe during an interview, a massive weight off my shoulders.

And it immediately was, made me think like, I want to be here because they sound like

I'm wanted.

That's spectacular.

And then, so you had a great interview and now you stopped sweating.

You walking around campus, looking around like, this is a great place.

I want to come to Oregon, and you already said because of the insurance issue, everything

was perfect.

So how long after that did you get an acceptance?

When did you hear back from them?

Good.

I heard back.

I heard back within a month.

It's also different for schools that aren't in Texas because Texas, the application opens,

or well, I guess interview season starts in August.

And if you don't get told, I guess, pre-accepted by October, then you have to wait until February

to hear back versus like, I heard back.

I interviewed in January, heard back within the month.

It was amazing.

I didn't have to wait several months.

So that was really great.

I'm going to be a little tangential.

So now your dad was an MD, obviously.

He trained in the Philippines near Manila or in Manila, I would guess, right around there.

Actually no, it's funny.

He trained in a more rural area.

Okay.

So not Manila, but yeah.

So he trained, right, not in Manila, but he trained in the Philippines and he came over.

He's an MD.

Did he have experience with DOs?

Like what was his feedback or what did he tell you about when you considering osteopathic

school or finally when you came home, we're like, guess what guys, I got into this awesome

DO school in Oregon.

Like what was your dad's response?

Oh, they were thrilled.

They were happy about it.

He has coworkers that are DOs and he's worked with DOs before, so he was, he was pleased.

That's great.

That's cool.

So you got the acceptance, you mailed them a check and you're off to the races.

Is that...

Oh yeah.

I liked the school so much and since I had gotten accepted, I'd had one more interview

after that one, but I went ahead and canceled it because I was pretty thrilled about my

interview up here.

First of all, tell me the name of the school that you're at.

We haven't talked about it.

Oh yeah.

Which school are you at now?

I'm at Western University.

It's quite a long name, Western University College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific

Northwest.

Wow.

So, pump Northwest.

That's the Oregon campus.

What city are you in?

Currently I'm in Portland, but the school is located in Lebanon, Oregon.

We're a branch campus from a California school.

And tell me a little bit about, again, you're the first med student we've had on the podcast,

so that makes it easier for us to talk a little bit, but tell me about what your experience...

You're a third year now.

Is that correct?

I am.

So tell me about the first two didactic years, what you think, and again, you've only been

to Oregon, it's always hard to talk to people about what their school's like when they haven't

seen other schools, but tell me what the school is like and what your experience was like

during the first two years.

And specifically, if you could highlight a little bit, and you already told us you felt

safe in the bathroom story, which it's awesome to be able to eat, drink, and pee while you're

at school.

That's standing.

That's awesome, right?

But tell me a little bit about what it was like being transgender in Oregon also.

Yeah, so it's so interesting to me.

Well, tell me about all of medical school though, and I don't want to focus just on

the...

I want to hear about your med school experience too, so tell me the whole thing.

Yeah, so it is going to be a little different compared to, I think, students that have come

after me simply because I was in person for my first two years.

But again, and I think it's a little unique in that Western U, since we're a branch campus,

there's also a campus in California, our sister school.

And so we share the same lectures and same professors.

And so we're often streaming each other's lectures.

Sometimes we'll have in-person, other times we'll have days where we'll sit in our classroom

and watch a streamed lecture that's occurring on the Pomona campus.

And so the first two didactic years, pretty regular, I'd say, you know, go to lecture,

study for exams, do our hands-on clinical and OMM labs, and it was fairly predictable

in that regard.

I mean, most of the classroom work, the hard thing about medical school isn't the material,

right?

It's the speed at which you have to learn it.

It's a lot.

No doubt.

Yeah, a lot of work, right?

A lot of material.

Yeah.

And so that was a little hard to get used to first year.

But again, I think after a certain point, everyone begins to have the same footing.

And so we just worked together to get through that.

How big is your class?

How many students in the class?

So there were about 100 people.

When I started medical school for various reasons, I think my class size is down to

about 95 now.

My class specifically also began a new curriculum.

So very different from what the year above me has.

And as the new curriculum, the people who are in the second and first year class, changes

that we requested be made, they're getting to have.

And so the interesting thing about having a new curriculum is that it's very malleable

at the beginning.

Which is a good thing, right?

I mean, it makes it sometimes a little rocky, but you can make it better for future students.

Right.

Yeah, exactly.

And the thing about med school, as you know, it's standardized, our tests are.

So everyone everywhere is going to need to know the same amount of material.

It's just how do we teach that and can we do it better?

So Gail, do all of your classmates know that you're transgender and how has that impacted

you and impacted them?

Yeah.

So I did the exhausting thing and came out to literally everyone on campus the first

week of school, which coming out to a handful of people was exhausting in and of itself,

but doing so over a hundred times is also not very fun.

But yeah, everyone on campus knows I'm trans.

In fact, I kind of use it as a point of education.

Like I didn't know that many trans people growing up, I still don't know that many trans

people.

When I began hormone therapy, I basically told my classmates like, Hey, let's watch

what happens because I don't know if you're going to get to see this and learn together,

right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was kind of funny.

It was a good bonding thing, I think, because, you know, creating a curriculum that covers

transgender health care, like you said, it's kind of, it's relatively new that medical

schools and just medicine in general is paying attention to it.

So it was a very, very low effort thing on my part to be like, Hey, I want to teach you

guys about how to care for your trans patients.

It's so interesting.

I invited you.

We're so happy that we have you.

It's such an important thing to be appreciative of transgender as physicians.

And I mentioned to you pre-interview actually trained in Miami, and there are a lot of different

people in Miami with different lifestyles.

So it's very easy, you know, coming from Miami, it was very easy for me, but I was once on

a board, a physician board that was advising on a healthcare insurance company, it was

a, a payer.

And at one of the meetings, they were talking about rolling out education for physicians

on transgender and I thought it was great, right?

Because I've been exposed quite a bit and it's things, there are things that I need

to learn.

And obviously there are people that have less knowledge than I do based on, you know, maybe

where they trained or what they've been exposed to.

And I remember one of the docs was like, I don't understand why they're giving this to

us.

You know, like there are, again, it was meant, it was meant very innocently.

Yeah.

I don't, there was no malintent, but he was like, well, why do, why do we need this?

And it was just interesting and I was like, listen, because there are more and more people

that you don't even know about and you need to have that knowledge in order to take care

of this group.

And it's really, we're undereducated, right?

Do you agree with that?

Oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah.

And I mean, I'm transgender and there are still things I was learning about because

I grew up in a really isolated community.

I had no idea.

And honestly, when I come out to people, a lot of the times I'm the first transgender

person that they've met.

I've gotten that comment from a handful of my attendings actually to just their surprise

at like, huh, well, I realized I've never actually met someone who is trans or at least

that I know of.

And so not to say that like, you should kind of expect the minority to educate the majority,

but for me it's, I understand that we're kind of in a like age where people are becoming

more aware of transgender individuals, but aren't that exposed.

And so don't really know how to interact with their patients who might be trans.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well said.

So my next question for you now, so you're transitioning going to your rotations that

you have been able to do in person and a question from, you know, we have a whole podcast team,

so we were all excited to have you on.

And so generally, if you could talk to me a little bit about how your rotations have

been and whether the transgender issue has come up.

And ultimately, one of the questions that was posed by one of our students was how you

deal with exams like either a rectal exam, a breast exam, a vaginal exam, a male genital

exam, you know, many times for myself, for example, if I'm examining a female, I always

have a female in the room at the time of the exam.

So tell us a little bit about number one, again, just being transgender on your rotations

and then two, when you do genital exams, let's say on a patient, what protocol you feel is

appropriate to follow.

Yeah.

So to preface my answer, I had double mastectomy around this time, actually last year and

about three weeks afterwards was when we were learning how to do our pelvic, breast and

rectal exams.

And it was very interesting to have the patient explain to me what breasts, what having having

breasts felt like, because I had had them about three weeks before we had the conversation.

So in terms of genital exams and whatnot, same protocol, like I want to shop around

there, like I'm not going to do anything by myself.

All of that said though, I am a trans male.

I just in general do get treated differently than people who are female presenting.

And the difference is palpable and almost immediate.

And that's been kind of a tangent, but it's definitely been.

Can you explain that a little more?

So different in what way?

Like, can you explain how it feels different and palpable?

I guess this is kind of a larger kind of concept of just gender and medicine.

Even though I have a female body for all intents and purposes, the way I am treated by both

patients and others that I interact with is starkly different than my female classmates.

And that also includes how patients talk to me and not to get into like too big a list,

but I try to be a lot more aware of that, especially when I'm taking care of female

patients or doing genital exams, because even though I know, like I know that I'm pretty

sensitive because of the way I present, I have to remember that I can come off differently.

Just so I understand, if there's a male attending and you're presenting to male attending or

female medical students presenting to male attending, sometimes they address you differently

than if it was the gale of 10 years ago presenting.

Is that, is that a fair thing to say or?

A hundred percent.

Yeah.

A hundred percent.

I guess for just certain examples, when I say I'm going to medical school, no one has

asked me if that meant I'm a nursing student or when I ask questions in class, I don't

have to explain myself multiple times or be interrupted and have people try and tell me

what I mean when I'm talking.

I don't get spoken over when I talk now, even though not too much has changed.

I haven't changed as a person.

I just sound a little different.

Even when presenting, like you said, mentioned the questions I get asked are different than

what my female classmates will get asked sometimes.

And it's really interesting being in the position I'm in with transitioning kind of like one

of my favorite transgender role models passed away a couple of years ago, but he was a neuroscientist

and there's a story of him having given research, a research presentation at a conference.

And then after the conference overhearing, some people say, you know, I liked his research

a lot better than his sisters.

Like it wasn't a different person nor it was a different research, but unfortunately that

attitude that sort of behavior is still present and it's a little frustrating.

So would you say in a way you've lived two sides of the same coin and seen things from

two different points of view and would say that again, from your experience that in certain

circumstances there are still biases against women as physician and it's more difficult.

Definitely.

You think that's true?

Oh, a hundred percent.

Yeah, I'm your, your listeners don't see, but I'm a five foot three Asian man.

I'm very nonthreatening and not terribly masculine.

And even so I will still be treated better than my female classmates.

Sad, unfortunately, and hopefully not by everyone, but, but definitely a very strong statement.

Gail, I still haven't grown up yet.

So you can ask me back what I want to do when I grow up.

But what do you want to do when, when you finish with medical school?

What do you know?

My joking answer is I told my patients, I want to be tall enough to be a doctor.

But yeah, it's a, I, I'm really interested in mental health.

One of the things I'm actually really driven by is just physician burnout, especially having

a parent who's a doctor.

One of the things I started up at my school, we call it the vulnerability and medicine

club purely because we didn't have a better name at the time, but me and another classmate

recognize that with all the pressures put on students to succeed, that there's no real

time or space to kind of just sit down and talk about struggling.

Imposter syndrome is really prevalent amongst medical students and the strive to be perfect

or constantly put together is also there.

And taking that DO philosophy for our patients, but also for each other and recognizing that

sometimes you just need to stop and have space and say that you're not okay and that you're

struggling, not necessarily to fix it, but just to get it off your chest.

And so one of the things I really like about my school's culture is that it's very collaborative

and very welcoming in that regard.

And so it wasn't difficult for us to kind of start this group where we'd have multiple

meetings a semester where we would just have a small group and talk about like what we

were struggling with, what we were dealing with, hearing another classmates say that

they were super anxious about like not feeling like they were good enough to be here or that

they had other things in their life that were going on, but they just, they couldn't focus

on school and trying to remove that feeling of isolation so that we could take care of

each other because we're all going to be physicians.

And kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, that's another reason I realized

why I wanted to do medicine is because if I want to change things for physicians, I

kind of have to be a physician.

Right.

I think everything you just said is super insightful, especially at the point that you're

in as a student.

Like that's something I would expect from a physician that's been practicing for like

20 years.

So that's pretty spectacular.

I think I'm lucky in that I am in an environment where I feel supported because that's another

thing too, is that I didn't realize there was such a huge difference between being tolerated

and being supported until I got into medical school and I try to make people feel that

way as well.

There's no doubt in my mind that you do.

My final question for you, Gael, and again, your time has been awesome, super valuable,

awesome.

Let's say there's a pre-medical student that's listening right now who is transgender and

thinking about going to medical school.

What advice would you give them about going to medical school and what advice about selecting

a medical school?

I actually am pretty involved in my school's interview process.

Not as much as a third year, but I was last year and the year before, and this goes for

transgender students, but also any other pre-med student.

At the end of the day, it's only a certain type of people that want to do medicine.

They're consistently hardworking across the board, right?

So one, trust in the work that you're putting in, and then two, go to a medical school where

you feel supported, where you feel like you're wanted in a school where you think will help

you succeed in what you want to do, because at the end of the day, again, we're all tested

the same way.

We all have to know the same amount of knowledge, so you want to go to a school where you feel

like you can succeed at doing that.

Gail, you've been great.

Thank you for your time.

Really.

Yeah.

Well, thank you.

I appreciate it.

This concludes our episode of Do or Do Not.

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This is Tianyu Sheng.

Thank you guys so much for listening to Do or Do Not.