August 31, 2016
Akua Aidoo, a medical student from Ghana, spent three weeks completing a rotation in the College of Community Health Sciences’ Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. She participated in patient visits in the Betty-Shirley Clinic, which provides mental health care to patients at University Medical Center, which the College operates. Aidoo is a medical student at the University of Cape Coast in Cape Coast, Ghana. Last year, Aidoo met Dr. Thaddeus Ulzen, chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at the College, when he lectured on her campus. She said she loved his style of teaching and was looking for an opportunity to travel for a rotation. So she approached him about completing a rotation at the College. She said the rotation provided an opportunity for her to learn specifically about child psychiatry. She says this was her first time being exposed to many child psychiatry issues, like ADHD or autism. While Aidoo has a strong interest in psychiatry and behavioral medicine, she says she is hoping to pursue obstetrics and gynecology after medical school. She also saw patients in the Family Medicine clinics at UMC. She says she not only enjoyed learning from and working with faculty, residents and other medical students, but also her patients. “Aside from the other medical students and faculty being nice to me, the patients were really nice to me,” she says. Aidoo says she is the first at her medical school to complete a rotation at the College, and she says she will encourage others to do the same. She hopes to return to Alabama again. “Medaase,” she says, or “Thank you” in Twi, a dialect spoken in Ghana.
