Exploring the Path to Medical School: With Future Dr. Antoinette Charles

Join us on the Black Med Connect Podcast for an enlightening episode as host Dr. Jasmine Weiss delves into the inspiring journey of future doctor Antoinette Charles. As a current medical student at Duke University School of Medicine, she is also pursuing a Master of Public Health with a concentration in Health Policy at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. Antoinette shares her experiences as a student, researcher, and health advocate in this episode.

We explore Antoinette's family's inspiration for pursuing medicine, her immersive study abroad opportunities, and her passionate interest in advocacy and public health. ✨🔬💼 Additionally, we dive into her current research endeavors, where she is advocating for patients with back and spine injuries.  Antoinette's dedication to advancing knowledge and addressing healthcare disparities shines through her innovative research contributions.

Throughout our conversation, Antoinette opens up about the challenges and triumphs of applying to medical school. From navigating the rigorous application process to embracing personal growth and resilience, she provides valuable insights and practical advice for aspiring medical students. 🎓

With her unique insights and unwavering dedication, Antoinette sheds light on her drive to make a positive impact in medicine. As a trailblazing Black female doctor-in-training 👩🏾‍⚕️, she shares her journey with authenticity, resilience, and a commitment to uplifting underrepresented voices in medicine.

Aspiring medical students, curious minds, and anyone fascinated by the pursuit of medicine will find this episode invaluable. 💼📚 Antoinette's story resonates with the challenges, triumphs, and aspirations faced by many on the path to medical school.

Join us as we uncover the captivating narrative of Antoinette Charles' journey. Don't miss out—press that play button and let the conversation begin! 🎧✨👩🏾‍⚕️🎙️


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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Ah, it's time to apply for medical school. Yep, we're in that season and our guest this week, future Dr Antoinette Charles, is here to share all about her experiences on her journey to becoming a medical student. We hope you enjoy this episode where she talks about her undergraduate experiences, some of her study abroad opportunities and her interest in public health as a current medical student at Duke University School of Medicine. We hope you enjoy as we jump right into this week's episode of the BlackMed Connect podcast. Roll the music. ["blackmed Connect Podcast"]. Hi everyone, welcome to the BlackMed Connect podcast, officially and affectionately known as the BeMed podcast, where we share inspiring stories of black physicians and physicians in training. So I am delighted to have a wonderful future doctor with us today. Her name is Dr Antoinette Charles. She is a Duke med student and I would love to hear all about her journey, and you all will get to hear about it too. But we are very, very excited to have you with us and thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 1:17

Thank, you so much for allowing me to be on this podcast and to just share my experience and my journey throughout medical school and my medical school training.

Speaker 1: 1:27

Absolutely So. This is a trainee edition or a medical student edition, because we want to make sure that people get to hear about the journey and all the different stages of the journey, and so, if you don't mind, could you share a little bit about your background and your upbringing and how you became inspired to pursue a medical career?

Speaker 2: 1:48

So I was originally born and raised in West Palm Beach, florida, and really grew up in like a close knit family. Both my parents died mom and dad and I'm a first generation Haitian. So within my family it was always like you're gonna be a nurse, a doctor, a lawyer, educator, things of that nature, like that's just always how I thought life would be. And then eventually during the summers I would spend time with my uncle, who's a family physician in Florida, and I would work in his office and I would file papers in the morning and then in the afternoon me and his granddaughter would go to the pool and go swimming. So it was always that routine and like the incentive to be in the clinic would be like Chipotle or Chick-fil-A, so can't go wrong there, right, yeah? So it was always kind of like around me, like the idea of being in medicine was always around me, like I have a cousin, not a triathlete plant surgeon. So ultimately, like I moved on to going to Georgia for middle school and high school.

Speaker 2: 2:58

In third Georgia I explored a number of different opportunities related to law, related to the military, and kind of just really check to see like what was the path that I wanted to go on And ultimately I found myself going to Georgia State University for undergrad And when I was trying to figure out my major I was in between English and neuroscience because I loved to write. And I ended up hearing this pitch for the neuroscience program like twice in the same week And I was like, okay, you know what, i'm just going to go for it. And that was kind of like my real exposure to initially getting involved in the hardcore sciences And I fell in love with my major. I absolutely loved everything about it. So that kind of made me want to go down that medicine route a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 3:50

But the pivotal experience that really like allowed me to know like this is for me is when I went on a medical brigade trip with college students in my first year and we went to Honduras And in Honduras we had an opportunity to work with local physicians, pharmacists and dentists And being able to see that like people would travel hours by feet, by horse, by bus, by car, just because you were the only people that would be able to provide care to them in the area for the next few months and also provide some medications, and seeing the impact of what it was like for these people outside of the country made me realize like just in my own backyard at home there's a lot of issues within our own community, especially in Metro Atlanta. The issue for me that like I really identified with the most was homelessness And that was kind of just like a nice soft introduction into like my public health interests as well.

Speaker 1: 4:58

Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like that experience in Honduras had a lot of impact And it's always something to think about how health care is practiced worldwide and how people either don't have care or do have care in different countries And, like you said, what's going on right here in our own backyard that we can then to begin to figure out how we can help and what impact we can make. So it sounds like you had those experiences very early. Just for our audience, i'm going to backtrack a little bit. Can you share a little bit about what types of classes you took during your neuroscience major and how you even came to be connected so you could go to Honduras?

Speaker 2: 5:37

just in case we have some college students out there listening, So for the first question related to like classes I would take, of course, like the normal pre-med classes, which is like organic chemistry, biochemistry, general biology, general physics, things of that nature. But something that was really interesting about neuroscience is that we could take like clinical neuroscience to learn more about psychology and neurology and getting to get a deeper dive into like dementia and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, and that was just like something that was very eye-opening for me in terms of different career possibilities. So for a minute I was really interested in psychiatry And we also got to take like abnormal behavior courses And we were able to like understand sex behavior as well through neuroscience. So something that just always inspired me is just that like I have a family member that has dissociative identity disorder And being able to watch that person while curling up was kind of like very difficult because I didn't necessarily understand what was going on And while I was pursuing neuroscience, that provided clarity on why things were happening. Even though there wasn't like a solid answer. It just allowed me to understand like the biology and the pathology behind it And just ways that it could be treated, and like that really provided like a sense of closure, i would say, and understanding that, like it wasn't necessarily that person doing it themselves. They just have, like a condition or a disease that they were dealing with and that they may not necessarily understand how to deal with it clinically, but just living with it on a day to day, being able to provide an insight I want to select for them, was something that like really provided that closure in my neuroscience classes And in relation to global brigades.

Speaker 2: 7:33

We actually founded that organization my freshman year And I found about, like found out about that organization through going to a biology honors society meeting And through that meeting I was hearing from like a junior and a senior who was graduating that year And they wanted to found this organization And I was like, yeah, like I love to travel and I really want to be able to see what it's like to do clinical care in places outside of the US, and I was just like all on board. I called my mom and I was like I'm gonna do this And I didn't speak any Spanish, so I was kind of like nervous. It was like my first time going outside of the country without my family. So it was a really, really fun experience And I highly recommend that. If you don't have a chapter at your school if you're an undergrad, to reach out to people at Global Regates and they can connect you with your local advisor and they can be able to help you find an organization to partner with or develop your own organization chapter on your campus.

Speaker 1: 8:44

I love that. I love that you were passionate and heard about something and took action to found the organization's chapter at your school, so it sounds like you're a natural leader, and that's what we need in medicine, right? We need people who are gonna take action and be leaders and think outside the box and do unique things, because we need it. We need it so much, so kudos to you.

Speaker 1: 9:04

As an undergrad, are you interested in taking a deeper dive with BlackMed Connect? Then join our BlackMed Connector newsletter. Each week, you'll hear more about our guests and go behind the scenes to get a deeper dive into their careers. You will get the professional productivity word of the week and you'll get to see and learn more about amazing physicians doing wonderful things in entrepreneurship and innovation. So head on over to bmedconnectcom and join the BlackMed Connector newsletter. Back to the episode. So can we talk a bit about your transition to medical school and how'd you decide on what medical school you were going to go to and what types of things were you looking for before you ultimately landed at Duke, which is also my alma mater? That is a good question.

Speaker 2: 9:55

So I would say, in undergrad I always thought that I would go straight through, but then when I reached my junior year and it was time to study for the MCAT, it was just like a storm that took me by surprise. I didn't really know.

Speaker 1: 10:08

That's a great way to put it That's a great way to put it A storm that took you by surprise. It is a storm.

Speaker 2: 10:13

Like I didn't know what I was getting myself into. So I was like, okay, like I'm going to need some time to like think about how, when I get into medical school, maybe I should take the MCAT at a later date. So ultimately I ended up taking a gap year and working at the National Institute of Health for a year And during that time I was like working with psychologists, psychiatrists and the clinical director's office and also having like experience with observing and shadowing, then encounters with patients and stuff like that who had extremely rare psychological diseases that were like an effect of something like cancer or genetics or things of that nature. So that was like a really interesting experience And through that experience I was able to get partnered with people at the pre-med office to help me walk through the process of applying to medical school. So I ultimately took the MCAT in May, before graduating or right after graduating. And then, well, i took the MCAT in May after graduating and after I transitioned from my MCAT I went on to NIH and worked there And during that time I was trying to figure out like what school did I want to go to, and maybe two weeks into my internship I was like completely devastated by the score that I had, just for all transparency reasons.

Speaker 2: 11:37

I had like a 502. So it wasn't really terrible, but it just wasn't what I was expecting And like that really discouraged me from even wanting to apply to medical school. But I talked to my mom and she was like you said you're only going to take the MCAT once, so like just apply, you already have everything done, like just see where you'll go. So I worked with my mentor to develop a list of about eight schools, submitted my application, maybe added like four more schools to that list, got back my secondaries and ultimately ended up interviewing at four schools. Those four schools were Florida International University in Miami, ucla in LA and then Duke and also Medical College of Georgia, which was my home school. And thankfully I got accepted into all of the schools.

Speaker 2: 12:32

And what helped me to make the decision with Duke is while in undergrad I did a summer program there and got really connected with the faculty members and the doctors that I was working with during my clinical program that I did at the sophomore And I kept those connections with me. And what really solidified my decision in going is just knowing that I'll have mentors when I reach the ground and knowing that I'll have a community of people to support me. And something that also really touched me is that as medical students, we have opportunities to go and call the students that got accepted into medical school. Or when I got the call from a medical student who also is Black, it just made me really excited to know that like I wouldn't be alone on this journey, because some people unfortunately may not have people that they can relate to or identify with during their medical school training.

Speaker 2: 13:27

And after I got that call, i kind of felt like I knew where I wanted to go And the last thing that really helped me in pushing that decision was ultimately scholarship money, and Duke offered to pay about like 95% of my tuition. So I was like That's the five-year-old for me. There you go.

Speaker 1: 13:48

I mean that's fantastic. And I feel like you've mentioned so many great things right. Like your score is not you as a person, that's the first thing, and your score it may. It fits into a larger picture of what schools are looking for and what they will find important. So just to anyone listening or watching, i want to reiterate that Like you are more than whatever score you get, your experiences.

Speaker 1: 14:12

You bring, like you said, your lived experiences that you've had growing up with your family member, your interest in neuroscience, your interest in global health. Those are phenomenal experiences that you are bringing to the field. So thank you for sharing that and for being transparent about that. And I do remember so funny you brought that up I hadn't thought about it in a long time but getting that phone call from some of the other black students that were already at Duke and how exciting that was, and then getting to do that for others, i remember that very well. Thanks for reminding me of that part of my journey. So thank you for sharing that. And so tell us a little bit about your experience thus far in medical school and what it's been like having that transition from undergrad into now, and then some of the things you've been involved in at Duke.

Speaker 2: 14:59

So I would definitely say that everyone is going to tell you medical school is hard, but when you're actually in the gutters and you're in the books In the trenches, it is.

Speaker 2: 15:15

There is no words to describe that experience of being a first year medical student and studying for that first exam because you feel like your life depends on it. But ultimately I learned that it's just another test. You're always going to be tested throughout your medical school journey, whether it's going to be the exams that you take for your courses or step exams If you're taking your board certifications for residency, also fellowship certifications as well. There's always going to be another test And something that I just had to get used to in medical school is just understanding that one. Your test is not going to define you greats, don't define you anymore because you already made it to that point where you have proven yourself. Granted. Of course, you're going to have to continue to prove yourself for residency and fellowships and become a faculty member, but I think once I took the weight off of myself of trying to always be the A student, always trying to be the top student, like I was in undergrad, i was able to truly enjoy the medical school experience Like, i was able to get involved in organizations. So I was a part of the graduate and professional student government for about two years where we would work on issues and advocating for students with people in the administration. So some of the efforts that we did was getting dental insurance and coverage for the graduate and professional students at Duke, which was a huge movement that we did, and then also being able to advocate for getting more mental health coverage for virtual therapy appointments. Thank you, guys. It's kind of crazy how they're like oh, at the beginning of the year you have nine appointments available for the entire semester and that's supposed to get you through, but some people need a little bit more help. So we advocated to get that extended and get more credits for people to be able to go and see a therapist at their convenience whenever they can.

Speaker 2: 17:19

And then something that I got involved with was the Student National Medical Association, also known as SNMA, and I was the how do I describe it? I was the medical student representatives that worked with the sister organization map, so that's just kind of like a subunit under SNMA, but it's really focused towards undergraduate students, so I would host seminars for them. I will connect them with medical student mentors as well, and then, in addition to that, we would also have opportunities for them to meet up in person and have events where they can just get connected with each other and network, because they represent its students from local organizations within North Carolina and the Triangle area, which is Raleigh, durham in Chapel Hill. So it was nice being able to like have a community of people who are also like-minded and on the same journeys as them, and I also was able to. I applied for a master's program and ultimately ended up getting accepted to do an NPH or a master's of public health at UNC Chapel Hill Billings School of Public Health and ultimately ended up pursuing that check as well.

Speaker 2: 18:35

So another thing about medical school that's really cool is that you don't necessarily have to give up your passions and the things that you're interested while being in medical school. So there's people who are doing art, there's people who are running musicals and people running clinics as well, so you don't necessarily have to give up your passions while being a medical student. And then, of course, i do a lot of research. I would say, like, research is something that has been a very integral experience ever since undergrad and something that I genuinely enjoy.

Speaker 2: 19:09

So I've been doing research as well and exploring different projects and teams as well. So the first year I worked on a project related to epilepsy training for providers in Uganda, and then in my second year, i developed a program for undergraduate students getting exposure to the field of neurosurgery especially people who are underrepresented within the field and allowed them to join on for a conference and meet with other neurosurgeons, students and medical students as well. And then this year I was able to get a grant and do research on developing a spine navigator program to help improve outcomes for people undergoing spine surgery. That's fantastic.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It sounds like you've had like such a wide variety of very cool experiences so far. Do you have a favorite? not necessarily a favorite, but do you have a project that you see yourself continuing forward as you continue through your training?

Speaker 2: 20:11

I would definitely say the spine navigator program is the project that I will definitely be carrying through, like I would say it's like my baby.

Speaker 2: 20:20

Honestly, i developed it from the ground up in partnership with another medical student And what we found is that as a public health master student, you're taught how to do interventions In medicine.

Speaker 2: 20:34

You're taught how to do interventions for a particular person, but sometimes we're not necessarily addressing the barriers to care that they may have.

Speaker 2: 20:42

So, for spine patients in particular, the reason why I wanted to pursue that population is because back pain, especially chronic back pain, is something that 80% of adults in the US will eventually have at one period in time, and there's a huge societal burden related to providing care for people, being able to give them social security benefits if they're on disability, and things of that nature.

Speaker 2: 21:05

So we wanted to work with that population just because of the barriers that it has associated in like the economy, society and also just personally as well with difficulty even being able to provide for their family or take care of themselves. We are just really interested in developing something that one can identify like what are some of the issues that they may have on their journey of seeking care and then to providing those resources, because another issue in research is that we identify problems all the time, but then to be able to identify solutions and to try them is another concept, which is something that is very integral in the public health education that I receive. So it allows me to collide and integrate my passions and my interests of being a future orthopedic surgeon and also being a public health professional as well.

Speaker 1: 22:06

I love that. I love that you've already kind of established and figured out so early that research is a lot of problem focused and trying to figure out the solution, but then moving from finding the solution to actually creating the intervention, to actually making sure that patients are on board with the intervention right and can actually receive the intervention And there's no barriers to getting the intervention, and so it's a whole spectrum that has to take place to get from the idea of a research question to solving the problem, to getting it into the patient who really needs it. So thanks for already figuring out and starting to see the steps that are necessary to make that happen for such a chronic problem for so many people like you described. That's phenomenal work that you are doing and you and your colleagues are doing.

Speaker 1: 22:51

We hope you enjoyed this week's episode with student Dr Antoinette Charles from Duke University School of Medicine. We know you all are in the trenches applying for medical school right now And if you have any questions for us, send us a DM on Instagram at blackmedconnect. Maybe we can help you out there. Also, we need you to share, share, share this episode and subscribe to our channel, the black med connect podcast. If you enjoyed this week, you'll definitely enjoy part two of our episode with our fabulous medical student future, dr Antoinette Charles. She will jump in and share more about her interests in research and public health, and we can't forget the bowlers round, where we'll hear some of her interesting answers to some of our questions. Until next time, always remember to dream without limits. Bye.