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Pallavi Sharma

Living Compassionate Values: Pallavi Sharma

It’s not easy for third-year College of Medicine student Pallavi Sharma to name what she likes best about NEOMED.

“I would say my favorite experience has been working at the SOAR Student-Run Free Clinic—NEOMED’s first such clinic, which was recently named Free Clinic of the Year by the Ohio Association of Free Clinics,’’ says Sharma.

“The Clinic has grown tremendously from when I was first involved my first year. The team of students that started it was just amazing. We started off with two patients on our first clinic day in September 2016 and now we’re up to anywhere from 20 to 25 patients each day. We have been to the Society of Student Run Free Clinics Conference for two consecutive years now, and SOAR’s name has truly spread across America!’’ she says.

Humanities at NEOMED

Self-expression has always been important to Pallavi Sharma, who has participated on NEOMED’s dance team and in the student organization Musicians in Medicine. As a third-year College of Medicine student, she has come to especially appreciate her Reflective Practice group, where she and her fellow students can have candid conversations about the pain and sadness they often encounter in hospitals. The course is part of the four-year Human Values in Medicine humanities curriculum in the College of Medicine.

“People are very upset in hospitals most of the time, so it’s hard to really center and remember those values that you learned the first two years of medicine. Especially in our curriculum, we’re taught to be compassionate and to really show you care, but when you’re thrown into your third year, you kind of become a little numb to all those things. Having Reflective Practice as a third-year has been tremendously helpful. You get to be pulled back and really remember that we are compassionate, and we are there for our patients,” says Sharma.

Especially after three years with the same group of Reflective Practice classmates, “We have a really nice bond,’’ she adds. “I think it’s great to participate in Reflective Practice, because you get to have those hard conversations about things you experience in clerkships that you don’t talk about in day-to-day life.

Sharma appreciates the chance to develop skills that go beyond medicine. “You learn how to talk to people, you learn how to be compassionate, you learn how to really interact with the community at another level. I think that’s super valuable.

“Humanities courses are fantastic at NEOMED.”