Summer Jobs, Leadership Studies Prepare Allison Kirk (’05) for Medical School

Allison Kirk (’05) has known since high school that she wanted to pursue a medical career helping the disabled. As a college student, she systematically planned her summers around learning as much as she could about the medical profession and the health-care system. Now she is ready for the next step. 

In the fall Kirk will become a first-year medical student at Rush Medical College in Chicago, where she anticipates specializing in physiatry, the science of physical and rehabilitative medicine. She already has some firsthand experience in the field.  

Kirk worked with children suffering from neuromuscular disorders, such as cerebral palsy, at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago during the summers following her freshman and sophomore years. “The children had so many problems,” Kirk said. “You can’t heal them, but you want to make them as functional as possible.”  

Kirk drew some parallels between the team approach used to treat these children and some of the team work she encountered at Jepson. The physiatrist headed a team that also typically included a rehabilitation therapist, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and volunteers such as herself, Kirk said.  

The team approach resembled the modus operandi of the Jepson Student Government Association, said Kirk, who served as JSGA president this past year. “As a physiatrist, much like JSGA president, you are the head person, but you certainly can’t do it all by yourself,” she said.  

“You have to work as a group to problem solve and figure out the best solution,” Kirk said. “Serving as [JSGA] president was a good experience to jumpstart me into my chosen field.” 

Kirk also learned a great deal that will be relevant to her future career on a one-week medical mission trip to the Dominican Republic the summer after her sophomore year. Her team volunteered in the remote village of San Jose de Ocoa, where Kirk’s duties included scrubbing, assisting with surgeries and sterilizing equipment.  

“We treated people who had been dealing with conditions for years who would have received immediate attention here in the United States,” Kirk said. “After that trip, I wasn’t afraid of blood anymore, and I thought hernia [operations] and hysterectomies were so cool!” 

Kirk, second from left, poses with three medical students at the clinic in  in the Dominican Republic.

The following summer the Jepson School awarded Kirk a Burrus fellowship to intern with CrossOver Ministry, a Christian-based nonprofit dedicated to providing quality health care to the uninsured working poor and the homeless in Richmond.  

Her internship at CrossOver was illuminating. “I witnessed firsthand the failures of our health-care system and realized the desperate need for free care,” Kirk said.  

Kirk, who studied Spanish for two years at University of Richmond, spent much of her time working in one of the organization’s clinics with Hispanic women who were pregnant and/or had sexually transmitted diseases. Many of the women were unaware of their condition and didn’t even have a rudimentary knowledge of family planning, pregnancy or STDs.  

Kirk also accompanied CrossOver workers to local prisons twice a week to teach female inmates how to promote healthy lifestyles within their communities. And she developed a standard-operating-procedures manual for the five clinics run by CrossOver.  

This summer Kirk plans to work with her father, an ophthalmologist, in his eye clinic. Interestingly enough, it was her father who encouraged her to major in leadership studies, rather than one of the science disciplines, as preparation for medical school, Kirk said.  

“So much of medicine is managing,” Kirk said. “It’s not just about being a physician anymore. There’s nothing worse than a doctor who can’t communicate with her patients. Dad thought a leadership studies major would help me develop the interpersonal skills I would need.” 

Coming from a man who has been practicing medicine for 23 years, that sounds like pretty good advice.