Medical Education Gets PERSONAL
Third-year medical students Peyton Williamson and Sarah Horn, a co-author of a paper on the
Student Perspectives Initiative.
Medical Education
Gets
PERSONAL
Future Docs Learn from Classmates’ Medical Journeys
Seth Bergenholtz, MD’23, was in his first year of medical school and struggling in a class on congenital heart diseases.
“I remember thinking it was hard to understand, and commiserating with one of my classmates who told me, ‘Well, you’re in luck because I was born with a congenital heart disease,’” recalls Bergenholtz, now in his third year in the Mount Sinai Internal Medicine Residency Program in New York City. “
She started explaining things to me in a very nuanced way, and I thought, people who have their own experience with illness have this great opportunity to be able to teach it,” he says.
He decided to propose the idea of pairing talks by students who have endured diseases or medical conditions with medical school lectures investigating those topics. With the approval of curriculum course directors, he sent out a request for volunteers to tell their stories and volunteered to share his own medical experience with Crohn’s disease.
“When you’re learning it from somebody who’s lived it you can empathize, and I think you internalize that information a lot better,” Bergenholtz explains. “It’s like learning from real life versus a textbook.”
His idea caught on with students and educators and, five years later, the Students Perspective Initiative (SPI) is a firmly established feature of a BU medical education, with each student talk drawing 25 to 160 classmates. In July 2025, Bergenholtz, Elyse Olesinski, MD’25, and third-year medical student Sarah Horn published a paper on the program in Medical Science Educator. In November, Horn presented the paper and the program as one of three medical education innovation projects selected by the Association of American Medical Colleges for their annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas.
According to Associate Dean of Medical Education Priya Garg, MD, SPI is both innovative and unique—BU and other medical schools have long brought patients into classrooms to discuss their medical histories, but BU’s program may be the first to have students discuss their own medical conditions.
“It’s definitely different when students see a classmate describing their condition and they get a chance to hear how it impacts the life of someone they can relate to,” says Garg.
“There’s something special about hearing your peers talk about what they have experienced in healthcare.” “These are the kinds of activities that give color and vibrance to a medical education experience,” says Jonathan Wisco, PhD, codirector of Principles Integrating Science, Clinical Medicine and Equity (PISCEs), the academic science curriculum for medical and physician assistant students. “Students COVER STORY Seth Bergenholtz, MD’23, was in his first year of medical school and struggling in a class on congenital heart diseases come to BU because that they know these extracurricular activities are going to inform all of the things that they are required to know and do.”
Typically, a call for volunteers goes out in the first few weeks of first- and second-year classes in advance of the shift to more clinical studies, when firstperson experiences are most effective. Once volunteers are selected, instructors are contacted to arrange a time slot immediately following course content, or as close to that as possible. Students are advised on presenting, but ultimately, their talk’s style and content is up to them; some incorporate research and use PowerPoint slides, while others give more personal talks.
“People who want to share their story know what they need or want to say,” says Bergenholtz, who launched a similar program in New York City at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“It’s definitely different when
students see a classmate describing their condition and they get a chance to hear how it impacts the life of
someone they can relate to.”
Before leaving BU, Bergenholtz passed the torch to Olesinski, then a second-year MD student and now a first-year internal medicine resident at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Olesinski has found that the presentations benefit both the presenters and the students in the audience, and is gratified at how many medical students want to share their medical stories—a process she initially thought would be hindered by privacy concerns.
“I told my own story, and what it came down to was this desire to share what had happened to me,” she says.
As a teenager, Olesinski was diagnosed with atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome triggered by a bacterial infection. The condition causes small blood vessel damage and red blood cell breakdown and can result in kidney injury—with the potential for renal failure and even death. As part of her treatment, Olesinski had a port surgically implanted in her chest to allow medication to be infused directly into her bloodstream every two weeks. As someone with the blended identities of both patient and physician, she felt this gave her an enhanced perspective for her interactions with patients.
“I’m interested in specializing in oncology, and in the cancer world people have ports for chemotherapy. We access those ports all the time, and people say that it’s uncomfortable,” says Olesinski.
“We might say it’s not that big of a deal, that this person just doesn’t have good pain tolerance. But, unless you’ve personally had a needle stuck in there, you don’t know that it’s actually quite painful.
“I think this program helps us see the bigger picture, to see that our therapies and procedures are not completely without harm or consequences, even if the side effects seem small. It makes doctors more careful, more mindful. It certainly makes me more patient when I have people bring up their concerns.”
The SPI program fits in nicely with the new curriculum, says Horn, who was in the second class that fully integrated the new approach to learning. “One of the major changes in the new curriculum was the transition from lectures, where you’re sitting and passively listening, to team-based learning, where you learn from your peers.”
Caitlin Neri, MD, MPH, a clinical associate professor and PISCEs codirector, recalls two students, both survivors of childhood cancer, who approached her with the idea of sharing their stories. One had Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age ten; the other had leukemia as a toddler.
“They did it together and it was really special,” says Neri, a pediatric hematologist who teaches first- and second-year medical students.
Neri notes another aspect of the presentations that resonated with students: “The class really liked it because here were these two young people who had these serious diseases as children and had survived and thrived. Obviously, the students who are coming forward to speak are doing pretty well. They’ve come out the other side, and that can be uplifting and positive.”
Presenting is an affirmative experience for the student speakers, too, and often becomes part of their journey to healing.
“Obviously, the students who are coming forward to speak are doing pretty well. They’ve come out the other side, and that can be uplifting and positive.”
“People generally said that it was a cathartic experience,” says Bergenholtz. “I think it’s good to be able to share with your peers something that you know deeply about yourself, and to feel that you are helping people like yourself, that next generation of doctors who will be better equipped to help people who have the same illness you have.”