Many medical schools, including the other naturopathic schools, have a while coat ceremony and wear white lab coats at their teaching clinics.  Students at the Bastyr clinic do not wear lab coats because it puts the clinician and the patient on a different level.  Naturopathic medicine is all about teaching patients how to be healthy while working as a team.  Lab coats can make some patients feel inferior, and consequently, their treatment less effective.  The team approach that Bastyr teaches is more effective.  You may have heard of “white coat syndrome,” where patients blood pressure and stress levels go up when in the presence of a doctor in a lab coat.  When I first heard the dean explain why we do not wear lab coats, I was so happy there is such an excellent reason.  I will never wear a lab coat with a patient for this reason. 

Acupuncture students at Bastyr do wear lab coats.  I have no idea why that is.

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

–Maya Angelou

Dear Teacher,

Do you remember me?  I don’t remember what you said that day, but I remember how you made me feel.  You made me feel stupid, inadequate, for not understanding something you said in class, and I believed you.  Today, my 25-year-old self sees that this was not about me, it was about you.  You decided you did not like me, and you spoke to me condescendingly in your classroom.  My 15-year-old self took it personally, was crushed by your authority, but 10 years is long enough.  You are no longer allowed to make me feel like I am not good enough.  I am in medical school now.  I am tearing down those barriers to learning that you put up.  I knew I was intelligent before you came along.  You had no right to make me feel that way because I did not share your family’s affinity for artistic extracurriculars.  You had no right to gossip about me among the faculty.

I am stronger than you, and even more so because of you.    I am dedicating my life to building people up because you brought me down.  My struggles have helped me grow.  Yes, thank you, you have made me stronger, when you intended to break me down.

Leigh

I own the two domains for this blog, thrivemedicine.com and thrivenaturopathicmedicine.com.  So, I can see how many visitors I have each day, how they find me, what links they clicked on on my site, and what search terms they typed into a search engine before they clicked on my site.  I was just very amused to see that someone google searched, “Is naturopathic medical school hard?”

Yes.  It is very hard.  I have to be competent in all the same stuff that a traditional MD student learns, plus things that they don’t learn: botanical medicine, nutrition, physical medicine, counseling, and homeopathy.  Some ND schools also require acupuncture (at Bastyr, you can add acupuncture if you want to).  It is MORE than traditional medical school.  It is 310 credit hours.  By comparison, my bachelor’s degree was 120 credits in the same amount of time!  Bastyr offers a 5 year track for students who wish to spread out their coarseload.  I recently switched to the five year track to make it easier, because quite honestly, it is slightly insane.  (Probabaly about half of each class switches to a 5 year track)  But, I absolutely love it and I can’t see myself doing anything else.  I am so sure this is my life path, but yes, it is very hard!  In the 8 months or so since I started, I have grown astronomically.  If it were easy, I would not be growing so much.  Personal growth is so interesting and so much fun, I am so happy to be doing this!

Another reason naturopathic medical school is so hard is we are trained as primary care physicians from the start.  MD students choose to specialize in primary care later on after their first four years.  In Washington state, naturopathic physicians are very nearly equivalent to MD primary care physicians.  We take licensing exams very similar to MD students.

All the NDs I have met are SO cool, I am so excited I get to be one.  They all talk about how fulfilling it is to be genuinely helpful as a physician.  A first visit with a naturopathic doctor is almost always more than an hour.  They really get to the root cause of your health problems to make your life better.  It is a long, hard road, but I am absolutely thrilled that is what I get to spend my life doing!

Spend a weekend with a naturopathic doctor who has been practicing nature cure for 33 years and was a founding member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP)?  There’s no way I’d miss it.  The perfect thing for the weekend after finals.  I was there with another of my Bastyr classmates, Jen, and two other recent naturopathic medical graduates.  Dr. Cathy Rogers was a really great instructor with an amazing healing presence.  She has a great location right on Puget Sound with a magnificent view.

Hydrotherapy is a really simple, effective healing modality underutilized in the United States. In Europe, it is often covered by insurance.  Dr. Rogers visited Croatia to see a hydrotherapy spa and found a group of hairdressers that were sent by their insurance company to for an extended stay to detox from all their chemical exposure.  The insurance company rightfully saw them as high risk for illness because of their profession.  Imagine that happening in the United States!

Under Dr. Roger’s instruction, we gave each other hydrotherapy spa treatments.  First, we dry skin brushed each other to get lymph flowing more effectively.  Then we went into the sauna or steam tent for 20-25 minutes.  While Jen was in the steam, I would bring her cold washcloths for her head and cold water.  After getting out some good sweat, she got out and took a cold dip in the salty Puget Sound, before more steam and sweat.  One more cold dip after, and then a neutral bath with epsom salt and herbs.  It felt like sitting in a bathtub full of tea!  It was outside where you could look out at the view of the Sound and Dr. Rogers has those really cool antique bathtubs with feet.  After the neutral bath, you get wrapped up in blankets to rest for a while.  This is just one kind of hydrotherapy treatment, there are many different variations as well as shorter and easier methods.

While Jen was in the sauna, Dr. Rogers got me thinking.  “If Jen were your patient, what were the kinds of things that she said and did this morning that you would want to notice and pay attention to?”  I appreciated her discussing this with me, because it is immediately obvious that Dr. Rogers has an excellent healing presence, and she gave me a few pointers on being present with a patient.

Hydrotherapy gets your whole system moving to help you detox.  The hot and cold contrast causes vasodilation and vasoconstriction, which gets your blood flowing a lot.  It can also help make huge emotional shifts, which is why Dr. Rogers sometimes combines it with psychotherapy in her practice.  This weekend was the perfect complement to the hydrotherapy class I took this quarter, and a nice break from all the long hours I have to spend studying hard science!

Listening to Dr. Rogers talk about the development of modern naturopathic doctors as licensed primary care physicians and creating the AANP was so interesting.  I felt so lucky to have this opportunity to spend time with her as a student!

If you are thinking about becoming a naturopathic physician, a great resource for the kinds of things NDs do is Naturopathic Doctor News and Review.  It is a monthly newsletter with articles written by NDs about all kinds of cases they have worked with in practice.  It is available for free around Bastyr, and probably also at the other ND schools.  You can read it online at ndnr.com.

I am so tired on Friday afternoons but after Naturopathic Theory and Practice from 3-5, I always feel wide awake and fully re-inspired.  A few weeks ago we had a discussion about why people eat the way they do, and what is really nourishing to them.

It is really easy to just tell someone to eat healthier in order to feel better, but getting someone to change their habits isn’t as simple.  You have to look at why they eat the things they do.  How does it make them feel?  What emotional connections do they have to certain foods?  What is their attitude toward food?

It is a lot harder to get someone to change if they have special memories around food that they know is not good for them.  What if their special grandmother always gave them that junkfood and it makes them feel good because it reminds them of her?  One of my instructors said she would never tell someone to try and change their diet around the holidays because it would cause too much stress and disappointment when they can’t have those special once a year treats.  I have been dairy free for two years and this past Christmas I chose to ignore the fact that some things I ate contained dairy.  It took weeks to get my system back on track, but those associations with things that you only get once a year can be really strong!

Asking someone to change their eating habits can be really hard on their social interactions.  What if someone always spends time eating things that have gluten with their friends and has a lot of positive memories associated with those gatherings, and now their doctor is telling them gluten is probably causing their digestive complaints?  What if a woman really takes pride in cooking and providing meals for her family, and now people cannot eat what she makes because they were diagnosed with celiac disease?  This can create a lot of disappointment on both ends.  Learning how to cook and accomodate major dietary changes is not easy!

A number of my classmates talked about feeling guilty eating junkfood on particular occasions and not feeling well after.  Their attitude toward the french fries made them feel sick!  Other times when they decided they were going to eat junk food and just not care, they didn’t feel so bad after.  They learned that junk food once in a while is nothing to feel guilty about.  Another classmate made an interesting point about trying to get her husband to drink less soda.  She realized that he just liked the fizzy feeling in his mouth, so she helped him switch to seltzer water instead and he is happy with this healthier alternative.

Something I realized after this discussion was that I would only buy blueberries because they are healthy and my parents would always buy them before I moved out.  The next time I was at the store after this class, I picked up blueberries and thought, “I don’t like these!  Why am I buying them?”  I always eat healthy, and I would just buy them because they are so heavily marketed as superfoods.  I didn’t even realize that I really don’t like blueberries until after this discussion!

I have been asked why I chose Bastyr by prospective students tons of times, so I will write it here.  These are my personal opinions, and I honestly don’t know much about the other ND schools.

I really don’t make major life decisions.  I just know them.  Someone told me to become a naturopathic physician, and I never doubted it for an instant.  I prettymuch just visited all 7 of the school’s websites and decided I wanted to go to Bastyr and that was that.  I didn’t want to go to Bridgeport because I wanted to get out of New England, because getting outside your comfort zone is the best way to grow.  (Blogging makes me uncomfortable.  It makes me grow too.)  I didn’t want to go to Southwest based on climate, I didn’t want to go to Canada, and Chicago just didn’t interest me.  I like the climate in the pacific northwest.  It’s good study weather.  I did not want to be in the first class at Bastyr California.

I was originally planning to apply to NCNM too, but my gut feeling told me otherwise.  I applied to Bastyr the first week of September as soon as the online application was open.  When that application was done, I tried to get started on NCNM’s application, but I was just dragging my feet and realized I just didn’t want to do it.  So I didn’t.  When I really want something, I just know.

I was only the second interview of the year.  I arrived on campus and was a nervous disaster for my interview.  I couldn’t even get little words out of my mouth.  Even after being a student for a few months, I would tense up every time I walked by admissions.  It’s interesting to see applicants waiting outside for their interviews now, I was probably more nervous than all of them!  If you are applying, you should try and find someone you know who is an experienced interviewer to help you practice.

I haven’t even been to any of the other schools.  There are things that I would have preferred about NCNM, like being in the middle of a city.  But living in the middle of the woods at Bastyr is ok for now.  I was surprised to learn that NCNM does not have a cafeteria.  I think the Bastyr cafeteria is an important part of the community, where people can all come together and eat.  I’ve met people at school that I wouldn’t have talked to otherwise just because the cafeteria was crowded and they sat with me.  I really like the Bastyr community and I am really happy with my choice.  I have never been someplace that is so non-judgemental and accepting where I can really be totally, completely comfortable.

A prospective student that was sitting in on one of my classes one day asked if I thought about going to traditional allopathic medical school.  Myself and I am sure almost all of my classmates would say no.  The current dominant medical system in the United States evolved in the last 100 years to treat acute diseases and emergencies, and does that very well.  However, the primary problems in the United States today are chronic like diabetes and heart disease.  Naturopathic physicians are well trained to help prevent and treat these types of diseases with diet and lifestyle.  That is where there is the greatest need in our heathcare system right now, and I want to be the most effective healer I can be, filling the huge primary care physician shortage.  I am so happy that I am being trained to do this.  Medical school is really a sacrifice of four years of your life with tons of hard work like you’ve never done before, but I am totally thrilled to be filling my calling!

One of the main reasons I am blogging is because I felt like I didn’t have much guidance on how to prepare myself for what naturopathic medicine is all about (besides academically).

One of the most valuable things I did was see an ND as a patient.  The AANP website naturopathic.org has a directory if you don’t know where to find one.  Someone referred me to one about an hour from me and after my first appointment I knew there was absolutely nothing else I wanted to do, and a year later I enrolled at Bastyr.  She is still a really wonderful mentor for me, I plan to precept in her office and I even had dinner with her when I was home for winter break.

When I came to Washington for the first time for my interview at Bastyr, I had lunch with a current student and she suggested I read the required naturopathic philosophy books before I started, and I am so glad I did.  I’m glad I could read them at my own leisurely pace rather than trying to stuff them in between all the other things I have to do.

Nature Doctors by Friedhelm Kirchfeld and Wade Boyle, which is about the progression of naturopathic medicine from traditional nature cure to the licensed primary care physicians we are today.

Vitalism by Matthew Wood, history of homeopathy and herbalism

Nature Cure by Henry Lindlahr

My Water Cure by Sebastian Kneipp

Getting to buy your medical equipment for clinical skills lab is pretty exciting.  I feel pretty fancy holding my stethoscope around my neck.  But learning how to use it is a lot harder than it looks!  Every doctor that ever took my blood pressure or listened to my heart and lungs before made it look like such a simple process.  It takes a lot of practice to remember all the places you are supposed to put your stethoscope, especially when you change partners and have to try again on someone with a completely different body type.

Blood pressure is a whole other story.  I feel like two hands isn’t enough.  It’s a lesson in multitasking and takes practice to get everything right.  The first time I took blood pressure last week, I tightened up the cuff and then continued to the next steps, only I took too long and had to loosen it before I could finish so my partner didn’t have his circulation cut off for too long.  As we continued with other things in class, one of our instructors pointed out a long bruise on my partner’s arm.  I felt so bad!  Luckily, he was very forgiving.  I spent a lot of time this weekend practicing on my housemates to make sure I never do that again!

In gross anatomy lab this week, we dissected the heart.  I had a hard time getting used to arms and legs, and then I got totally comfortable with that and now I feel like I’m starting from scratch.  I really tried hard to think of the woman who generously donated herself, and how she wanted us to use her to learn, but I had a hard time.  I had to leave the lab twice and sit outside when I was feeling really naseous.

Most of my classmates just thought it was really cool, but I couldn’t get past the idea that this was someone’s heart that sustained them for their whole life, and we just took it out and cut it up to look at all the parts on the inside.  When I got back in the lab after my partners had removed the heart from its place in the middle mediastinum, one asked if I wanted to hold it.  Nope.  I hope I’ll get used to it, just like I got used to muscles