We propose a summer clinical immersion program at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University that brings Biomedical Engineering (BME) PhD students from Ithaca Engineering College Campus to New York City Medical College Campus for dedicated intensive clinical exposure in the summer between their first and second year of graduate training. Each student will take bioethics lectures, shadow clinical practitioners and participate in clinical related research under the direction of a clinician mentor. This clinical summer immersion is designed to connect BME to healthcare and society and to steer and enhance students' research interests towards medicine. It will immediately impact their PhD thesis research by adding a medical conscience and influence their long term career towards improving healthcare.
We propose to connect Biomedical Engineering Students' laboratory work with healthcare and help them give their discoveries the best chance to benefit clinical medicine by immersing them in a major medical center to shadow medical practitioners and participate in clinical research. When BME students see patients' suffering, they appreciate the urgency and importance of developing medical technology solutions to healthcare problems; when students watch in person their clinician mentor diagnosing and treating patients, students appreciate the utility of medical technology in medicine; when students see the limitations of the patients and the clinical environment, they develop a perspective on what kinds of technology solutions can be clinically workable; when students participate in clinical research, they appreciate the impact of medical technology.
