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Leah Bauer, MD |
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My name is Leah Bauer, and I am a PGY-1 in the MGH/McLean program. I recently moved to Boston from Ohio, where I attended medical school at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. I was born in Toledo, Ohio and raised outside of Cleveland in Shaker Heights, Ohio. After getting my undergraduate degree in psychology at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, I took a few years off to explore my interest in the outdoors and do some travelling and cycling before I buckled down to start medical school. Needless to say, I’d been in Ohio for quite a while and by the time match day rolled around I was ready for a change! I’m really excited to be living in Boston and have been pleasantly surprised by how much time I’ve had to explore so far during intern year. My fellow residents and I have recently taken a guided tour of the city by bicycle, spent time in several museums (e.g., the Institute for Contemporary Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum the Museum of Science, and the Harvard Natural history museum), and won second place at a trivia night. I really enjoy exercise and have gone on some beautiful runs along the Charles River and long bike rides out to Walden Pond. I’m also realizing that I can live quite easily off my resident’s salary (despite Boston’s high cost of living) and don’t have to worry much about enjoying a nice dinner or buying a plane ticket from time to time. I’ve started my year on Blake 11, the inpatient psychiatry unit at MGH. So far it has been a wonderful experience (plus no call and weekends off!). My team typically has six medically complicated psychiatric patients. The population of patients is diverse and can often span six different decades of life and six different diagnoses. Before we round each day, we have didactic sessions led by MGH faculty that ranging topic from medical psychiatric issues such as depression in chronic medical illness, to patient interviewing skills from the psychodynamic perspective. Once a week we have a “resilience enhancement” group, during which we work through our personal emotional struggles involving patient care. After morning rounds and an afternoon of learning from patients, and possibly taking a new admission, I find myself getting home by 7pm, with enough time to work out and do some reading before bedtime. My career interests are still developing, and that’s one main reason I chose the MGH/McLean program. The breadth and depth of psychiatry is fully represented between the two campuses, and I know wherever my interests lead me, opportunities to explore them further will follow. Clinically, I find working with adolescents and young adults particularly rewarding, and I would like to seek out more patient care and research experience with this population in studying the development of psychosis. I’m also very interested in mental health on a populations and systems level and was excited to learn that past residents have found time and support to pursue an MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health in their fourth year. |
