{"id":143786,"date":"2026-04-23T12:38:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=143786"},"modified":"2026-04-23T12:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T16:38:48","slug":"a-fresh-perspective-for-bu-medical-students-by-medical-students","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2026\/a-fresh-perspective-for-bu-medical-students-by-medical-students\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fresh Perspective for BU Medical Students, by Medical Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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Lena Papadakis (Sargent\u201921, CAMED\u201928) presenting during a session for the Student Perspectives Initiative, a student-led program where medical students share their own personal stories with illnesses that match topics being taught in class. Photos by Cydney Scott. BU Today story by Molly Glass.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine program puts students at the front of the class to share personal experiences <\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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April 23, 2026<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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When Lena Papadakis was born, she confounded her parents and her doctors with an array of gastrointestinal (GI) and respiratory abnormalities. Every time her medical team thought they\u2019d solved an issue, another seemed to pop up in its place. It meant that Papadakis, one in a set of triplets, was in and out of (though mostly in<\/em>) the hospital near her North Shore home for the better part of her infancy and childhood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The combined challenges of GI distress and respiratory abnormalities meant that Papadakis had pneumonia\u2014not just once or twice a year, but dozens of times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat have we learned about recurrent pneumonia in infancy?\u201d Papadakis (Sargent\u201921, CAMED\u201928), now a second-year medical student at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, asked a roomful of first-year medical students during a recent presentation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a screen behind her were baby photos of herself and her sisters, alongside clinical notes and diagnoses from her earliest days. Addressing a roomful of aspiring doctors, she walked her peers through her own medical history\u2014both the clinical journey her medical team took and what that journey felt like as a young girl. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer Papadakis was looking for, provided by one of the first-year med students in the room, was: recurrent pneumonia in infancy can be a symptom of cystic fibrosis. She followed up, encouraging the students to recall their earlier lessons: why could her doctors cross this genetic disease off the list? Answer: she has an identical twin, who had no symptoms. (In Papadakis\u2019 triplet, she has one identical sister and one fraternal sister, though all three girls were born at the same time.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New Perspective<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Papadakis\u2019 presentation was part of a relatively new program at the medical school called the Student Perspectives Initiative<\/a>, a student-led program where medical students share their own personal stories with illnesses that match topics being taught in class. It gives the presenting student an opportunity to share a little bit more about themselves and gives their peers a chance to understand a clinical topic in a more human way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One or two students from each class volunteer to organize and facilitate the program for their cohort, coordinating with the medical school faculty to slot in presentations based on when a topic will come up in the curriculum. A student who has migraines with an aura, for example, might share about the experience during the neurology module. Students volunteer to share their experiences, so it\u2019s a different mix of conditions each year. Entirely run by students, there\u2019s almost nothing prescriptive about the initiative, a feature that lends it credibility among students and makes it basically seamless for faculty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Augusto (Trey) de Leon (CAMED\u201928) (from left), Emory Davtyan (Sargent\u201923, CAMED\u201928), Lena Papadakis (Sargent\u201921, CAMED\u201928), and Kamel Moufarrej (CAS\u201925, CAMED\u201929) have all been coleads of the Student Perspectives Initiative. Moufarrej and de Leon are coleads for the current class of first-year med students. Davtyan and Papadakis, now second-years, led their class last year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the five years the SPI program has been running, students have discussed a wide range of medical topics, some that they have experienced themselves and others that a close family member has experienced. The list includes ulcerative colitis, pneumothorax, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, retinal detachment, treatment-resistent depression, thyroid papillary cancer, Lyme disease, viral meningitis, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Emory Davtyan (Sargent\u201923, CAMED\u201928), who spoke about the years of intense pain she experienced as a result of endometriosis, the presentation for her classmates was unexpectedly cathartic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was initially drawn to SPI because it\u2019s an incredible program that can really help heal the speaker if they\u2019ve been through significant amounts of medical trauma,\u201d Davtyan says. Along with Papadakis, she helped coordinate the program for her cohort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOnce I was a part of this program,\u201d she says, \u201c I started realizing it\u2019s also just a great method for raising awareness about certain medical conditions and it\u2019s a great teaching method for students who are basically just picking up information like sponges, day in and day out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Novel Program<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it just brings that humanity and that empathy to issues like: what does it mean to live with one or more of these conditions? How does that influence our relationship with patients as we go on to be providers, caring for people with these conditions?\u201d says Elyse Olesinski, who, like Papadakis and Davtyan, helped to organize the program for her cohort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olesinski (CAS\u201921, SPH\u201921, CAMED\u201925) was also part of a team that collected data about the SPI program to evaluate its efficacy. According to that study<\/a>, published in 2025, students who participated in the SPI program said that it helped them learn, better understand the emotions connected to a disease, and feel more connected to one another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Papadakis explains that her doctors could rule out cystic fibrosis because the genetic condition wasn\u2019t found in her identical twin sister.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Horn (Sargent\u201921, CAMED\u201927) was part of that research team as well. She recalls attending a handful of SPI presentations during her preclinical years at BU and the warm, connective learning experience they provided. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was when she was doing research for the paper that something big occurred to her: this program might not exist anywhere else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe realized something that was not immediately obvious to me just from attending the talks: this is kind of a novel program,\u201d Horn says. \u201cAs a student listening to these presentations, I had assumed this kind of thing happened at most med schools. But when we looked in the literature [as researchers], we couldn\u2019t find anything like these student-as-the-patient stories. A lot of schools will bring in patient storytellers, which is pretty common\u2014and we do that for a number of conditions as well. But there\u2019s something very personal about it being your peer, and until we started researching, I didn\u2019t realize it doesn\u2019t exist elsewhere, at least to our knowledge. That\u2019s really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Horn and the research team\u2014which includes Olesinski, alum Seth Bergenholtz (CAMED\u201923), and Ariel E. Hirsch<\/a>, a BU medical school professor\u2014hope that the program spreads to other medical schools. There\u2019s reason to believe it could: Horn gave a presentation on their study and the SPI program at the most recent annual conference of the Association of American Medical Colleges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a room full of senior faculty and administrators from medical schools across the country, Horn says, she got a lot of questions about the logistics of the program and its impact\u2014two areas of inquiry that lead her to believe there\u2019s deep interest in the program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur big takeaway message from the talk was that this is a very modular, adaptable program,\u201d she says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t require a lot of lift from faculty to implement, because you do your curriculum as you would, and the students have their stories. You just have to schedule a time and let people come. We got a really great response to that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Educational Journey<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Back in the BU Medical Campus classroom, Papadakis finished up an energetic sprint through her childhood and early adolescent medical history. She ended by explaining that her experience, difficult as it sometimes was, influenced her decision<\/a> to go into medicine herself. She is eager to break down the silos between child and adult medicine for patients\u2014like her\u2014whose care spans both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The children whose lives we save today deserve more than hope; they deserve a healthcare system that grows with them, understands them, and never stops learning from their journey.<\/p>

<\/p>Lena Papadakis (Sargent’21, CAMED’28)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe children whose lives we save today deserve more than hope; they deserve a healthcare system that grows with them, understands them, and never stops learning from their journey,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Papdakis opened up the floor for questions. The dozen or so medical students, who had been at rapt attention throughout, took a moment to digest what they\u2019d learned over the last half-hour. Then, a bunch of hands were raised. Some students had questions about her lived experience as a patient, others had specific inquiries about the various clinical procedures she described. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was careful to answer each one, then rushed to pack up\u2014she and Davtyan, who was in the audience, had a class to get to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Lena Papadakis was born, she confounded her parents and her doctors with an array of gastrointestinal (GI) and respiratory abnormalities. Every time her medical team thought they\u2019d solved an issue, another seemed to pop up in its place. It meant that Papadakis, one in a set of triplets, was in and out of (though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":143787,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"Student Activities","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[495,358],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[379,384],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[390],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143786"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143786"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143797,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/143786\/revisions\/143797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=143786"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=143786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}