Nikhil Patel, '18, Interns at Beaumont

My summer was spent doing a radiology externship at Beaumont Royal Oak under Dr. Kurt Tech, '80, an Albion alumnus. I was with two other students interested in medical school and we had a mixture of shadowing and interning experiences.

I got to see how diverse a field radiology truly is. You can have little to no patient interaction if you simply read scans in a dark room (a neuroradiologist for example), or you could be in general radiology where you regularly meet with patients and take scans. Coming out of the externship 12 weeks later, my appreciation for radiology as a field increased dramatically.

Albion's Healthcare Institute set me up with this externship. They initially acted as a liaison for Dr. Tech and I, and that got the ball rolling. The institute helped me look at other medical professions aside from physicians, nurses, and medical researchers. They want to give you the breadth of the health sciences so you can pick your ideal career within healthcare.

It gave me an in-depth look at diagnostic medicine. As an aspiring physician, I won't have to wait until rotations in medical school to be exposed to radiology.

The small class sizes mean that the professors get to know you by name, and if you are interested in their research, it makes it easy to match up with them. Many of the classes I've had have been taught by faculty with the terminal degree in their field as well.