As it turned out, Kennedy\u2019s colleague Kathy Lyons, ScD, needed help with a palliative care research project she was helping to lead. It\u2019s goal was to test whether having nurses at a cancer hospital in San Pedro Sula make weekly telephone calls to chemotherapy patients would help them better manage their symptoms.<\/p>\n
With Bullock\u2019s background and experience\u2014which included fluency in Spanish, being an oncology nurse before coming to medical school, and having already worked in the city of San Pedro Sula for a year as a volunteer in an HIV\/AIDS clinic\u2014she turned out to be \u201cthe last piece in the puzzle, effectively making Kathy\u2019s project run much smoother,\u201d says Kennedy.<\/p>\n Bullock worked with Lyons, a psycho-oncology researcher at the Cancer Center, to develop the materials and a mechanism for tracking results. She then spent six weeks implementing the project in Honduras, staying with a family she\u2019d grown close to while previously living in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cMy role was to work with the co-investigators to train the nurses in the use of the manual and scripts that we designed, adapting them to their cultural context, and also in the format of the telephone calls,\u201d explains Bullock. \u201cIt included running them through simulation calls and different scenarios, and then troubleshooting and making adjustments for any issues that came up.\u201d<\/p>\n Kennedy and Lyons say Bullock\u2019s dedicated involvement was crucial to the project\u2019s success. \u201cI really enjoyed working with the physicians and nurses down there and learning more about oncology in another country,\u201d says Bullock. \u201cAnd it was great to be part of such an important project\u2014palliative care is something that\u2019s very limited in Honduras, and many patients have to travel long distances to receive care.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was also wonderful to reconnect with old friends; I feel like I have family there,\u201d adds Bullock, whose special connection to the country has played a pivotal role in her path to medicine.<\/p>\n Growing up, Bullock\u2019s own family moved often\u2014from Minnesota to Kansas to Oregon, and finally to Arizona\u2014due to her father\u2019s work as an Episcopal priest. Her strong interests in Spanish and health care began early, influenced by encouragement at school and at home (her mother was a nurse and a nurse practitioner).<\/p>\n Bullock graduated with a BA in public health from Johns Hopkins University in 2005. While there, she volunteered at health clinics in Baltimore and Madrid, Spain, where she spent a semester abroad, and also competed as a varsity distance swimmer for four years (sharing the same practice pool with Olympian Michael Phelps).<\/p>\n \u201cI actually started out as premed in college, but as I got closer to applying to medical schools I realized I didn\u2019t really know why I wanted to be a physician,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI thought it would be important to have more experience to help me decide which direction to go in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n After she graduated, Bullock searched for her vocation in a variety of health care settings. She worked in the inpatient psychiatry unit at Phoenix Children\u2019s Hospital as a behavioral health and case manager technician, in a physical therapy clinic, and in the (aforementioned) HIV\/AIDS clinics in Honduras.<\/p>\n \u201cInspired by my experience in Honduras, I decided to enroll in nursing school,\u201d says Bullock, who graduated as a registered nurse from the University of Arizona in 2010.<\/p>\n For several years, she worked on the inpatient hematology\/oncology bone marrow transplant unit at the University of Arizona Medical Center, before moving to an oncology infusion clinic in Tucson to gain outpatient experience. She also continued to go back to Honduras as a volunteer interpreter and nurse on medical mission trips.<\/p>\n \u201cI loved nursing, the relationships I had with the patients, and the challenge that came with it every day,\u201d says Bullock, who considers her former field to be great preparation for medicine. \u201cBut I was always motivated to learn more about the pathophysiology of disease and the role that physicians play in diagnosing, managing, and treating patients. I think with all of those experiences I had working as a nurse, I can now confidently say that medicine is my passion\u2014this is what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n As a second-year student at Geisel, Bullock is balancing her busy academic schedule with activities outside the classroom such as serving as a team member of the medical school\u2019s Migrant Health Project\u2014which provides comprehensive medical care to migrant farm workers in the area\u2019s dairy and agricultural businesses\u2014and swimming for a local masters swim team at the Upper Valley Aquatic Club.<\/p>\n \u201cI think being a swimmer has taught me discipline, helped me to stay organized and manage stress, and the friendships I\u2019ve gained through it have been really important,\u201d Bullock says. \u201cIt\u2019s also a good lifelong exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n Dartmouth\u2019s close-knit community, supportive learning environment, and ample global health opportunities were key factors in Bullock choosing Geisel. \u201cWhen I started last year, I had been out of school for a while and struggled with some of the difficult science classes,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I really felt supported here by the faculty, staff, and my classmates. And I\u2019ve made some really good friendships.<\/p>\n \u201cSo far, the experience of moving from nursing to medicine has exceeded what I had hoped for,\u201d says Bullock. \u201cIt has made a lot of things I\u2019d seen in my career as a nurse make more sense, and explained a lot of things I never fully understood. I\u2019m loving medical school, and I\u2019m really glad that I made the decision to come to Geisel.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Experiences such as working as a volunteer on medical mission trips to Honduras and practicing as an oncology nurse in Arizona helped Meghan Bullock \u201920 decide that medical school was the right path for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":8997,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,679,1],"tags":[19,23,847,409,176,257],"class_list":["post-8992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-insider","category-news","tag-cancer","tag-global-health","tag-home-feature","tag-medical-student","tag-nccc","tag-student-spotlight","author-26"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/megan_b-pool-nc.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-2l2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8992"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9003,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8992\/revisions\/9003"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/11\/Meghan-Bullock-hond-hosp-360x360.jpg\")
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