Honors Grad featured in Boothbay Register
Honors graduate, Jennifer MacDowell ’13 was featured along with another UMaine graduate, Valerie Smith ’13, in a Boothbay Register article about their experience with Maine Medical Center – Tufts University School of Medicine Maine Track Program.
An excerpt from the article written by Alan Crowell:
Valerie Smith’s journey to medical school began in an ambulance at the beginning of her junior year at the University of Maine at Orono.
A friend had talked Valerie into becoming an emergency medical technician and that fall night she had volunteered on the campus ambulance system for the first time. Her first patient was a freshman who dislocated his knee while playing basketball.
The young man was very uncomfortable and while she couldn’t offer him medication for the pain, she held his hand on the bumpy ride to the hospital. It made a difference to the patient and Smith was hooked. Over the next two years, she spent as much time as possible volunteering with the ambulance service.
“I realized that as much as I liked doing research and working in the lab, it was the personal connection and interaction with patients that I really loved,” said Smith.