Approaching the 2nd Semester Integratively

Towards approaching the 2nd Semester Integratively



We started the first week of the 2nd semester in ASMPH with the usual double whammy of an MD subject and an MBA. Many of us were quick to consider the MBA subject Strategic Human Resource Management (HumRes for shot) and whether it's as "chill" as last semester's or not. Mixed responses from across the section (and presumably the same for those who had a not so chill PriMan subject). I found it fascinating that there's this unspoken agreement that the MD subject (Cardiovascular and Respiratory Module, or "CardioRespi") is already going to be incredibly consumptive of both our focus and time, whereas the MBA subject is gauged merely on time. 

The tension between the two subjects did not work so well for me last year (as some posts in the past attest to) so in short, I've thought to approach this semester integratively. 

The CardioRespi lectures this week already provide an implicit demand for integration. Not only must anatomy and physiology be considered, but also the environmental factors of which the systems (which the human person is made up of) interact with the measurable environment. As an example, we've had basic lectures on respiratory physiology throughout the week (Gas exchange, respiratory control, etc.) but towards the end (and anticipating next week) we had (or will have) lectures on special environments (mt. everest, SCUBA diving), sleep physiology and smoking. 

I can write up a feel-good reflection about how "HumRes" is just Medicine applied in a larger scale but this much has been emphasized in monthly leadership meetings as well as the new field's catchword "systems thinking". But this superficial analogizing will do HumRes as well as Medicine a disservice. What it means to approach the 2nd semester integratively will require a dialogue that checks in hegemony (a desire to impose oneself on another) at the door and checks instead serious "Magis" as a group mate of mine said in passing. A lot of this has to do with the human person to work out the nexus between the MD/MBA. Many will likely do so later due to survival instincts and hyperventilation kicking in, but not doing so eventually will undermine the very reason why you chose to sign up for this "doctor of the future" program. 

Hopefully that will be some kind of mental bookmark to think about approaching that time of the month we have to do our Examen. This point of the program is indeed part of the process, or perhaps more appropriately– the formation. The MD/MBA's format will form us into the future doctor that will be equipped to address the needs of our patients, who are already enveloped in things like Human Resources, who obviously respire, but who are also persons with unique inalienable value. 

Aristotle's example usually comes to mind for me here. He describes causes for a statue to be a "statue". One of the causes is the "formal cause"– the form of the statue. The material cause may be that it's made of bronze, but the formal cause of the statue means that the statue is not just bronze but is made out of bronze but is not the bronze itself. Same thing for the "formal" cause of the Atenean MD/MBA doctor. We will not just be made up of the letters attached, the courses survived, or even the sleepless nights, but we will be formed out of it through integration. And integration does not just mean this objective fact of what we're made out of but also the lived experience– the phenomenology– that helps us understand ourselves more through a careful observation and description of the subjectivity that in-spires our doctoral humanity.

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