For years, Ai Yamasaki’s friends and family told her she would be a great pediatrician or family medicine physician because of her bubbly personality.
“When I came to medical school, I said, ‘I’m not going to let other people tell me what I’m going to do,’” Yamasaki recalled recently. “I’m going to figure this out on my own, darn it.”
Then, during her third year at WMed, Yamasaki completed a rotation in pediatrics and realized her friends and family had been right all along.
“I did my rotation and I said, ‘These are my people,’” Yamasaki said.
Now, Yamasaki is among 10 students from WMed’s Class of 2019 who matched in March into pediatrics residency programs across the U.S., more than any other specialty. Yamasaki will complete her residency training at Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids.
As she prepares for the next step after medical school and takes time to reflect, Yamasaki said her time working as a summer school teacher in Wellesley, Massachusetts during college, and her experience mentoring high school students in Boston helped prepare her for what awaits her in residency.
“I am very cheerful,” she said. “I’m very optimistic. I’m very playful and open. I think that I have the personality that allows me to get along with children really well.”
During the last four years at WMed, Yamasaki said she has benefited from the tight-knit community of students at the medical school, which is similar to what she experienced during her time as an undergraduate student at Tufts University and in high school.
“I really thrive in a supportive, close-knit group,” Yamasaki said. “I think that being here for four years really emphasized the importance of really knowing the people around you, knowing who you can ask for help if you need it, knowing where the resources are to get things done. This place has really prepared me to not be afraid to reach out. It’s really been a blessing to be here.”
Yamasaki found a similar closeness and bond in the resident team at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids. Though it’s a larger program that welcomes 20 new residents per year, she said it felt like the residents were close to one another and program leaders, which she said is important to her.
As Yamasaki prepares to head to Grand Rapids in June, Dart Newby, a fellow classmate in the Class of 2019, will complete his pediatrics residency at the University of California Irvine Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
Newby, a California native, said he appreciates that working in pediatrics gives him the opportunity to affect a young patient’s life in a positive way.
“In every pediatric interaction you have an opportunity to make a significant impact in someone’s life and really make a difference even if you’re providing reassurance or counseling,” Newby said.
During his time at WMed, Newby said the clinical pediatric faculty were fully invested in him becoming a great clinician. The experience, he said, helped prepare him for the challenges he will face in residency.
“The pediatric faculty here are amazing clinicians, teachers and people, and I would say they greatly impacted my decision to go into pediatrics because I want to be just like them,” Newby said.
For Maria Mason, the decision to pursue a residency in pediatrics after medical school came about slowly. When she arrived at WMed, she had her eyes set on becoming a psychiatrist and she was adamant that she did not want to be a pediatrician.
Then, during her a clerkship in pediatrics during her third year at WMed, something changed, Mason said. The rotation, she said, included several late nights, often working until 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. navigating one admission after another.
Following a particularly harrowing night, Mason remembered heading to the call room to get a quick hour of sleep.
“For me, that was a really clear moment,” Mason said. “Even when I wasn’t having the time of my life socially it was still the right choice for me.”
By the end of her pediatrics rotation, Mason said she couldn’t fathom pursuing a different specialty. In March, she matched into the pediatrics residency program at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.
Mason said she loves working with children and appreciates their brutal honesty.
“The ways in which they are uncompliant patients are so much more honest and so much easier to handle,” Mason said. “Getting parents on board for the treatment of their children is much easier than getting adults on board for treatment of themselves. My job every day is to get down on the floor and play.
“I love the informality of pediatrics,” she added.
Mason said she thinks her time at WMed has prepared her “wonderfully” for her next step in residency.
“The evidence has been good from the feedback of doctors in the community,” Mason said. “When I have gotten with them they have been impressed by my clinical skills and my baseline knowledge so I think that speaks well to WMed’s training and the undergraduate medical education we have received. Certainly, I think our clinical preparation here is second to none.”