Hi! I’m Kate Smith. You can refer to me using any pronouns you like. I live on land that the Abenaki people traditionally cared for. Here are some reasons you should work with me!
Here’s the TL;DR (that’s Too Long; Didn’t Read for us who don’t do web-acronyms)
I am reliable, savvy, and people find me calming to work with
Exam Essentials’ curriculum emphasizes a caring approach to sensitive exams. It was developed by drawing from the diverse knowledge and experiences of myself, the team, and medical and mental health professionals
I am happy to help with the needs you have, whether it’s scheduling instruction, creating lectures, working with students who have different learning needs, or helping existing providers brush up on their skills
My thought process has been described as “exceptional, quirky, and charming”
I have a collection of fun socks I wear to create levity while instructing learners
It may seem silly, but with a nuanced topic and nervous students, we want to be approachable
Want more details?
Here are some of my thoughts about the work we do
Working in medicine is difficult. Receiving care can also be difficult, especially for many people who are part of groups that experience marginalization by society. Whether it’s a patient who’s experienced trauma, or someone from the Deaf community who’s also gender non-binary, I want everyone to have good experiences accessing quality healthcare.
The vast majority of providers want to provide that! But when do they have time and resources to learn how best to approach patients? Medicine is a difficult science to learn, but communication is also challenging.
Educating students in healthcare has been shifting from the model of a stoic, detached professional common before the mid-1900s to a professional whose duty is to help a patient achieve wellness partially through eliciting and supporting that person’s feelings. I can only imagine how valuable it is to learn from long-time providers the best ways they have found to speak with patients. But that’s only one side of the coin. Lay instructors are the voice that tells you how those words land and what words could be more effective.
Ultimately, Exam Essentials (and groups like Exam Essentials) work for fellow patients—people whom we’ll never meet, who will never know us or the work we do, and whose experiences we care about deeply.
Along the way, we revel in teaching medical learners who also care deeply about the people they will be treating. Our instruction strives to be twofold. It includes specific strategies for centering the patient while also modeling the empathy and respect we seek to instill.
While I always feel we could spend much more time with learners, we hope that the time we do have grows with them to create a healthcare landscape that prioritizes well-being through a greater focus on patient and student experience. Together, we are shaping a generation of providers who are both skilled in medicine and also compassionate in their approach.