McGovern, the Next Generation: Zoe Strain
During a clinical shadowing experience in El Paso, Texas, Zoe Strain met a young man who had been living with a frightening possibility for six months.
A large growth had developed on his face. He feared it could be cancer, but he did not have health insurance and had put off seeking care.
Eventually, he traveled from another state to an emergency department in El Paso, home to the region’s only Level I trauma center for hundreds of miles.
The attending physician ran tests to rule out other possible causes. In the end, Strain watched as the patient heard what he had feared for months.
“We essentially had to confirm his biggest fear and then tell him there was nothing we could do,” Strain said. “He didn’t have access to healthcare at home.”
Strain left the encounter thinking about everything that had happened before the patient ever reached the emergency department. He knew something was wrong. He was scared. But the potential cost of seeking medical care had become another reason to wait.
“Having access to healthcare could have prevented the progression for so much longer before it had gotten so bad,” Strain said. “Had he not been so scared and stressed about the financial burden of seeking medical care, the harm could have been reduced significantly.”
For Strain, now a first-year student at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, the experience put a patient behind an issue she had already begun thinking about: People need access to medical care, but they also need the knowledge and confidence to participate in it.
“My inspiration to pursue medicine stems from a passion for patient empowerment,” Strain said. “Ultimately, as a physician, my aspiration is to serve not only as a source of information and guidance but also to empower my patients with the necessary tools to proactively manage their own well-being.”
Strain came to medical school with an academic background that might seem like an unusual pairing.
She double-majored in neuroscience and statistics.
Neuroscience gave her a way to study the biology behind human behavior. Statistics taught her to work through large amounts of information, recognize patterns, and account for different variables when solving a problem.
In her data science courses, Strain worked with tools such as machine-learning algorithms. She sees some similarities between that process and medicine.
“You’re optimizing what’s best for each individual patient,” Strain said. “You have the path of care, the treatment, how much their insurance is going to cover, their cultural beliefs, and everything.”
There is an important difference, of course. A patient is not a data set.
The same diagnosis can look very different when it belongs to two different people. One patient may have insurance while another does not. They may have different beliefs about treatment, different family responsibilities, or different resources available when they leave the physician’s office.
“It’s different for every patient in how we should best treat their illness,” Strain said.
Right now, that problem-solving aspect of medicine has Strain interested in internal medicine. She likes the variety and the process of putting together symptoms and other information to determine what might be happening with a patient.
She is keeping her options open.
Whatever specialty she eventually chooses, Strain wants patients to understand their care rather than simply receive instructions.
When she encounters difficult material in medical school, she sometimes imagines having to explain it to a patient one day.
“I want to be prepared not only to explain complex information clearly, but also to help patients feel informed and empowered to make decisions about their care,” Strain said.
Getting to medical school once felt less certain.
Strain entered college interested in medicine but knew that plenty of students begin their undergraduate years saying they want to become physicians and eventually find something else.
Her acceptance into the Joint Admission Medical Program, or JAMP, changed how she looked at the possibility.
“Everything felt so much more possible and less out of reach,” Strain said.
Through JAMP, she gained clinical experiences and met other students pursuing medicine. With each new experience, she found another reason to keep going.
“Every experience that I had just further solidified, ‘I love this, and I would love to do this,’” Strain said.
She also found something important in the other students she met through the program. Many had overcome financial, educational, or social barriers on their way to medicine. Strain believes those experiences will matter when they begin caring for patients who have faced some of the same obstacles.
“They know what it’s like to be in a lot of their shoes,” Strain said. “I think that sets us up well for serving different patient populations.”
When Strain was deciding where to attend medical school, she paid attention to how students at McGovern Medical School interacted with one another. The warmth she saw during the application process felt genuine.
Since arriving, she said that impression has held up.
“Belonging is the word that comes to mind,” Strain said. “Every day, I feel more and more sure I’m on the right path.”
There is plenty about that path she has yet to figure out. She does not know what specialty she will ultimately choose or exactly what her career will look like.
She does know what she wants the relationship with her patients to look like.
The young man Strain encountered in El Paso had spent months frightened by what was happening to him and worried about what seeking care might cost. By the time he arrived at the hospital, his choices had narrowed.
Strain wants her future patients to feel they have choices and to understand what those choices are.
“My ultimate goal for my career is to empower patients with the knowledge and understanding necessary to actively participate in managing their own health,” Strain said. “I aim to foster genuine partnerships with them.”