Helena medical student visits Kenya, gaining experience in caring

Jenna Starke, 26, visited the African country as a part of the "Global Health Clinical Elective" through the University of Washington's WWAMI medical program.

Her two-month visit had its positive and negative moments, but overall Starke said she was grateful for the experience and the program.

While in Kenya, she rotated through the Naivasha County Referral Hospital, a government-funded hospital, working in medicine wards, pediatric wards, labor and delivery, a tuberculosis clinic and its HIV clinic.

One of the positive moments she remembered while in the hospital was the welcoming clinicians and patients because she wanted to know them and they wanted to know her.

She said unfortunately death is normal due to a lack of resources, so clinicians became used to it.

Although, the negative moment during her trip was death, she experienced different diseases that are not common in the United States.

Starke said outside of the medical practices, she was able to have fun on her weekends off by exploring western Kenya.

She learned about the culture in the communities along with making chipati, an unleavened flatbread commonly eaten in Kenya.

She played rugby, went on hikes and safaris, went camping and explored national parks.

This was her fourth global health experience since entering the medical field. She had been to Mongolia, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador prior to Kenya.

This was her last rotation in medical school since she will graduate in May and begin her residency in Greeley, Colorado, pursuing full-spectrum family medicine.

Starke said she gained more of an understanding of underserved medical communities in the world and has researched ways to decolonize medicine by empowering local clinicians so those communities do not have to rely on clinicians from privileged areas of the world.

She realized she wanted to be in family medicine because she knew it was a more engaging field in medicine on a personal level.

She has always enjoyed getting to know people's stories and said that is what most of medicine is about.

She recalled was a positive moment that influenced her to pursue family medicine even more.

Starke said about two years ago she was helping a patient when her preceptor came in and spent about an hour speaking and listening to the patient, who complained about abdominal pain.

The doctor and Starke figured out the patient had internal family issues that could have added to the abdominal pain and Starke said, "family medicine is for me."

She said she hopes to be the type of clinician that is there for her patients, not just on a medical level, but on a personal level.

Most of her medical training was done in Montana and she plans on coming back to the state to help underserved communities because she feels a sense of home here.