Future doctors take the stage

“I’ve been trying to get here for so long,” said Hines, who served as an intelligence officer in the Army and worked at a bank in Chicago before being accepted to medical school at age 32. “Participating in medical education is a huge opportunity. I feel we are expected to go forth and do great things. My challenge will be to break it down day by day, week by week.”

Hines, who grew up in Oxford, Wisconsin, joins a diverse class selected from a pool of 7,125 applicants. Seventy-five percent are Wisconsin residents and more than half identify as women. Sixteen percent are the first in their families to earn a bachelor’s degree and twenty-seven percent come from groups historically underrepresented in medicine.

All will soon plunge into a challenging, four-year MD training program. They will work their way through a curriculum of clinical sciences, basic sciences and public health, with the goal of graduating and landing a residency. Along the way, they will have the chance to explore every specialty offered by the school, from anesthesiology to urology, and discover passions and pathways that will determine their careers in medicine.

“I can’t think of a better time to be climbing on board the roller coaster of medicine,” said Dr. Robert N. Golden, dean of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, who welcomed the incoming class at the annual White Coat Ceremony at Shannon Hall on Friday, August 23. “One of the amazing features of our profession is the way in which service to others is intertwined with one’s own personal growth. Enjoy the ride.”

If medical training sounds like a long path, the journey to medical school is often no less challenging. What motivates future doctors to dive headlong toward the hardest things? For many, it starts with a deeply personal experience.

First-year medical student Molly Pistono grew up in Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin and worked as a caregiver for a quadriplegic woman during her undergraduate years at UW–Madison.

“It was a very unique experience, very immersive,” Pistono recalled. “I spent 12-hour days with her, several times a week, helping her navigate her appointments and needs. It felt less like caregiving and more like entering her life. You can’t truly understand what other people go through unless you place yourself among people who are different than yourself.”

At the same time, Pistono, who majored in neurobiology, served as team manager for the UW Badger Women’s Volleyball team from 2018-2022, which taught her “how I want to live my life and work within a team.”

Joining the UW Health Trauma and Life Support Center for a year as a nursing assistant solidified Pistono’s decision to become a doctor.

“There was the team aspect,” she said. “There was my scientific curiosity. There was my desire to serve others. I found that what I was seeking in my career was not so much a job, as a vocation.”

For Kaniala Aragon, the realization came when he was sidelined for months with an injury, leading him to reflect on his life. Aragon came to Wisconsin as a young boy from Hawaii, where his family was living in the poverty-afflicted Manoa Valley east of Honolulu. Aragon’s family moved into his grandparents’ basement in Sun Prairie, then eventually to Columbus. While he was in high school, Aragon’s mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Later, his father moved back to Hawaii and experienced homelessness.

“Seeing the care that my mother received at University Hospital and all the teams that were involved with her treatment, inspired me to pursue health care,” he said. “But I also saw how challenging it was for a homeless man to access the health care system.”

Aragon had been pursuing a degree in radiology at Marian University in Oshkosh until he sustained an acute spinal injury while lifting a patient at the nursing home where he worked.

“I lost my social and active lifestyle,” he recalled. “I started doing a lot more self-reflection. It was no longer: ‘I want to pursue my studies for a job and pay.’ It was now: ‘I want to do something more.’”

After he recovered, Aragon changed his major to biology and shadowed Dr. Daniel Malone, a rheumatologist at Columbus Community Hospital.

“It was Dr. Malone who helped me see that I could doctor with a purpose,” he said. “I felt like I was on the right track.”

Hines, the former Army intelligence officer, has doctoring in his genes — his father is a rural veterinarian in Oxford, in the same practice started by his grandfather in the 1950s. After graduating from UW–Madison in 2014, Hines chose to serve in the Army, but a long-buried dream of medical school resurfaced when a military surgeon and an allergist provided him with life-changing help for serious esophageal issues.

“I still had a few years left in the Army, but was now thinking: ‘Man, I wish I’d been a doctor,’” he said.

After prolonged soul-searching, Hines contacted Dr. Joseph Holt, who directs the school’s Wisconsin Academy for Rural Medicine (WARM). The program seeks students, ideally from rural backgrounds, who are committed to rural care.  Hines heard what he needed to hear.

“I want to be caring for people like those I grew up with, and learned so much from, as a kid growing up in a rural area,’ he said.

While many students dream of interacting with patients, others dream of discovering the next treatment or cure. Naa Ashitey is the daughter of Ghanaian immigrants who grew up in a low-income household in Chicago, Illinois and often served as advocate for her parents during doctors’ visits. When a cousin was diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica (NMO), a rare autoimmune disease, Ashitey realized the role that scientific research plays in medicine and perceived a gap between the two that she wanted to help bridge.

“I knew from then on that I wanted to pursue research in the field of immunology,” she said. “Getting to say I am an MD-PhD student still feels like a fever dream. I look forward to doing all I can to ensure more underrepresented students have access to higher education and feel like they belong.”

Regarding her reflection in the mirror at her white coat fitting session, Ashitey could not stop a brilliant smile from breaking across her face.

“I feel emotional,” she said. “It’s almost unbelievable. But it’s real. It’s happening.”

With that, she turned from the mirror, straightened her sleeves and walked into the next chapter of her life.