[MUSIC] You're listening to Lee Com Presents Heroes in Training. The Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine, also known as Lee Com, has been providing training to heroes all across the globe since 1993. This podcast gives you an insider look at the stories of triumph and hope from both former students and faculty, helping you decide if Lee Com is the right choice for your higher education. Let's start the show. [MUSIC] Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Lee Com's Heroes in Training. I'm Kathleen Spinazola, your host. And today we have Dr. Jacob Sikersky, student Dr. Ryan Garrish, and I'm just going to let them do the talking for the most part because everybody knows I talk too much. So Dr. Sikersky, tell us what your role is here at Lee Com. So I am the director of Osteopathic Medical Admedicine here on Eerie Campus. And I was actually a graduate in 2014 from Eerie Campus and did my fellowship here in an amount, their almost-gullis skeleton medicines. So it's kind of a, if you will, a homegrown story, if you will, to be able to give back to the students and to help get new faculty is really a huge part of what I do and the privilege to work with people like a student Dr. Garrish. Now, Ryan, you are a fourth year medical student, correct? All right, and the focus of today's podcast, because we could talk to these two about many, many things. But what we want to focus on today is the LUMOS program. LUMOS stands for Dr. Sikersky. You got it. The LUMOS undergraduate manipulative medicine osteopathic scholars program. And this was the brainchild of Dr. Sylvia who said, and recognized the need of additional trained educators in osteopathic manipulative medicine. It is a very unique skill set that when we graduate, when Ryan left at the end of his second year, we have such a high skill level for every student that leaves. And we want to make sure that we continue to foster that skill to a point where you could ask him the hardest question backwards and forwards. And he'd be able to explain it or help you understand it in a different way. And when we do that, our goal, unabashedly, is to try and increase the amount of enthusiastic young faculty that can teach LUMOS. Amazing. So, Ryan, tell us now how you have found your way into the program. What is it that inspired you about being in this program? So, firstly, my favorite portion of OPP is talking to faculty, especially when you have those additional questions that not really everyone's thinking of. But also everyone's thinking at the back of their head. But being able to come after hours sit down, especially with faculty like Dr. Fall coming in on your Saturdays, having that extra bit of knowledge to keep you driving forward. But I saw that this was an opportunity for a new opportunity to learn. That's one of the things that I find very deeply in my heart to keep going forward. So when I found this was a program, I knew I had to apply. I ended up getting to know what the interviews that I had in the essays that I wrote were good enough to give me up. It's a process. So, in order to be considered for the LUMOS program, you have to be a student in good academic standing, obviously. And you have to have passed your boards because at this point, you've taken to new order to come. And then there's a pre-interview questionnaire application that you fill out. Once we determine that, hey, this is a person we think would be a good fit, then we bring them in for an interview. And as a part of that interview, they not only have to answer the questions that we would like in a composed way, but then we also give them a physical skills assessment right that in there based on whatever we feel. So. Okay. So when you say a physical skills assessment, that means you're testing their ability to perform somebody, perform somebody. Yeah, the performed diagnosis and treat osteopathically. So, and they just on the spot, you know. That's a pretty intense process. It is. Did I mess with you, Ryan? I was going to say telephone years was like, what was your experience? Luckily, I knew all the staff coming in. It was a very friendly environment, so not very serious. Yeah, I was very relaxed. But yeah, Dr. C. Treadpoll and a fast one, I guess, had me diagnosis cervical spine, but I hope I diagnosed him correctly and treated him professionally. You wouldn't be here. So tell me sort of fundamentally, Ryan, what is it about osteopathic medicine and the fact that you get to study OMM that drives you? Firstly, it's the holistic approach being able to treat one portion, but also trying to satisfy the needs of the entire body as a whole. One of the biggest things that we learn in lab is the sacrum and your cervical spine or your key. If you fix one of them, you kind of do top down or bottom up depending on the faculty that you work with. But essentially, it's just that extra step that you take that a lot of alopathics don't take. Right. But we're always doing it for the betterment of our patients in order for them to hopefully leave the hospital or be able to get better sooner than one later. Right. Right. What, first inspired you when you were starting it, when you were looking out. Right. I was telling you. Right. Exactly. So what is it about osteopathic medicine that just really passionate about? The thing for me is that I always knew that I wanted to do a physical medicine. Right. And why is that? I really didn't like the idea of just sitting behind a computer and clicking boxes and saying, "Have a good day." Right. Like, I just, I always wanted to work with my hands and whether that be procedure-based, I love surgery. I spent a lot of time in my training undergoing a lot of different surgical training, but that lifestyle wasn't the best for me. I think it's great for some, but it was one of those things where you have to make a decision and then I do have a family and want to go home to it. Right. Right. So when I actually asked my chiropractor an undergrad and I said, "I think I'm going to go into a chiropractor because I like you can work with your hands." And she goes, "Do not." And I said, "Why?" and she goes, "I'm so frustrated by how limited that I am right now." She was in the latter half of her career. She knew when you needed an MRI. She knew when you needed an antibiotic. She couldn't do any of those things half the time. And she's like, "If you can go to medical school, go to medical school." And then my pre-health advisor at Kenysha's College, now at Kenysha's University, said, "Why don't you go to an osteopathic medical school?" And I had no idea what that was. And after researching it, I'm like, "Well, duh." This is exactly where I'm supposed to go. And then even as I progressed through, I did my fine med residency. I always made it aware to other people I wanted to manipulate. I wanted to do physical medicine. So they would just send me patients as a resident. And first, your resident, and half my schedule is manipulation. But I'm the same credentials, everybody else. It's just that I said I wanted to do it. So I'm very fortunate for, I was at Sisters of Charity Hospital that they were able to get that part of my. Part of my training and then one thing led to another. And at the end of the day, I was not going to be the director here. I love all the faculty here. And when they approached me about it, I said, "What about, you know, I listed all the faculty that I thought were more deserving and have been here?" And they're like, "No, we want young people to do it with that kind of energy because I was in private practice for five years and I told my wife, we would have another person join me within five years." That seemed very reasonable. No, there wasn't anybody. And so I said, "Okay, how am I going to fix it?" And so the way to fix it is I got the job here. So the seeds and watch them grow. Guys, there was no other place but Lee Cum where I can have his great impact on the future generations of osteopas, than where I am right now. So. So you found your calling? I did. And then we found Ryan. And he's in, honestly, all of the luminaries, which is our nickname for our Lumos program participants. That's so great. They're all the same passion or more about teaching and using osteopathy. I would think so. And how did you. Oh, there's something unique about you also, Ryan. Am I right? You are a master of medical students. Yes. So Ryan also has his master, master of medical science degree from Lee Cum, correct? So tell us a little bit about your pathway to us. Of course, ironically, actually all three luminaries have a master's medical science. We were all the same year. Same applies to everything. So depending if it was just in first year online. But essentially, I graduated from GAN University in 2021. Are you native to Eerie? Yes, I am from Eerie. Born and raised. So go ahead. I know, right? But essentially, I got waitlisted at a few medical schools. I went through throughout the country. And I stumbled upon this master's medical science that Lee Cum offered. A lot of my pre-med advisors were saying post baccalaureate programs. Master's programs are very heavy towards getting you into medical school. It's not so much just doing scribe work or doing that clinical work. It's the actual knowledge base that you want to get before you get into medical school as well. So essentially, I applied for it, got in as soon as I applied and just had my. Just for it? I don't know if you're going to get into medical school. I'm not going to get into medical school. helpful, did you find it? Yeah, it was yeah. A scale of one to ten. I would say ten, ten, ten, ten, yeah. That's so terrific. And where are you on rotations right now? So currently, I last year I was in Watertown, New York for my third year clerkships. After getting accepted into the Luma's program, I had to relocate. Luckily, we're in a place that has three different hospital systems with Leacom Health, you have St. Vincent and UPMC Amit. So I kind of been shotguned everywhere, so I don't really have a core site. But recently I've been just spending a lot of time at Leacom Health Hospital and St. Vincent Hospital because I know the area pretty well. Just a little there. 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[email protected]. Classes are now forming. At Leacom we know wellness and are teaching the business of health care. This message brought to you by Leacom, a non-profit organization. So you're getting a lot of hands on, you're getting a lot of different kinds of experience. What what's what are you excited about for next? Well one of the reasons why I did this fellowship was to teach. I love the opportunity to take that knowledge that I've learned throughout my four years and provide a pathway as Dr. C said for the incoming students to see where I will be or where they will be as a fourth year student. The biggest thing that I want to do is take that teaching farther so once I get into residency. I'm thinking about staying on as hospitalist. I'm an applied internal medicine. So general medicine and hopefully teaching the medical students the residents going forward. On a lot of my interviews recently I've been giving one of the quotes that I got bestowed upon me is to teach us the ability to learn twice. So I think that's a very good quote that I'm going to start living by. Very inspiring. Very inspiring. Oh the world needs an army of you guys. We're trying. I know one one student at a time right sort of through this program. That's right. Yes absolutely. And what are you seeing is next on the horizon Dr. C? For the program for the school for well so one of my personal vent one of my personal vendettas is there's well because there's a lot of discussion about the merger a very controversial topic between the American Medical Association. So the ACGME is now the single accrediting body for every doctor in America. And there are a lot of advantages there. There are some disadvantages. But for me personally I think that osteopathy and osteopathic medical education is the most complete form of medical education that there is. So it pains me to know that you can become a full doctor in the United States of America and completely ignore this skill set that we have here. And so long term my like pie in the sky I'm retiring. You know this happened and I can rest easy is that every medical school has to learn osteopathic manipulation. Every medical school has to understand those fundamental principles of osteopathy. And the only way that that's going to happen is if we have more people to teach. Because right now we can't fill all the new osteopathic medical schools that are opening. I'm ecstatic that there's that much interest that we want more osteopole medical schools. But they are having a very difficult time finding faculty for those schools. Not everybody has the depth of the talent pool that Lee come does in order to fill those gaps. And especially for new schools that are trying to start or schools where maybe a bunch of people have retired. All of all of our faculty get requests and job offers frequently. And if we don't fix that problem internally, how could we possibly spread it to everybody else? And if that could happen, my goodness, we could we could make the healthcare of America so much better. And that's all AT still was trying to do. I was trying to say, hey, let's think about this. Should we be giving opiates for a headache? I don't know. You know, we know now that was probably not a good idea. But at the time that was what you did, you know, it was it was so we just always look at things both critically and with the night of the future. And so that's where I want to be. I want everybody to know what this is and to be able to be confident in using it. So sorry. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'm just kidding. Tell us what you do, Ryan, when you're not studying and working and studying and working. And working, do you have time? I will say I do have a little bit of time, especially in the afternoon. So if I wake up early enough in the morning, currently actually I'm training for a half Iron Man, a 70.3. Well, luckily my brother is a he's a full Iron Man. He's a coach. So he's paying paying for me to get coached, I guess by him. And he gives me about an hour to an hour and a half workouts every single day. So I can kind of prioritize my time or I need to and be able to get those workouts in when I can. That's exciting. So you know, everybody loves that whether it's like running or you know, weightlifting, working out just whatever is your exercise thing, right? And the summer, I do like to go golf when I really need to just take a step back. But yeah, now golfing is probably my main real life. I do like all the indoor golf places. Some of them the golf simulators seem to be like a lifesaver for every golfer. Yeah. I actually thought I'd golf simulator for myself. Unfortunately, I was only able to use it in the summer because it I don't have a big enough space in my garage. I start swinging. I hit the garage door. So hopefully when I get into a apartment, I'll have like 10-foot ceilings that I can actually take a swing of it. Well, we talk about work, life, balance all the time and you know, all the things, you know, all the things that people do to recharge and you know, revitalize themselves on these stressful intense days. Yeah, I think it's very important. Mental health and physical health. You should always be your top priority because you can you can't do too much if you don't have enough energy to do stuff. If you have too much, you can't do too much. Now, but you doctor see, tell us what what's I know you have three babies. I was going to say, how many kids do you have? I have three babies all five and under. So what I do for fun is that. I keep I keep everybody alive, fed and what, watered and they're a riot. It's another kind of running. It is. It is. But you don't think about all the different ways that a child will change you until you're like, hey, I slept for two and a half hours straight last night. I know. And you're like, once? I'm like, she haven't. Yeah, I mean, I may have been fully dressed in on the couch, but that was two and a half hours. That's all the two and a half hours. It's a big deal. But no, I wouldn't change it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a and like, is there your little buddies? Because then you get to like, they're everything. It has recently snowed here. And I'm from Buffalo. And we got a few feet. And I can now take my front porch, which has about a four and a half foot drop off and go sledding right off. So it is, it is very fun because, you know, they even have my nephews over. It's just, it's a riot. It's very fun. Yes. So let me, let me ask you this before we go for today. If you can give, you know, one piece of advice, maybe to a student who wants to aspire to be like Ryan, somebody who is, who, you know, is interested in the NUMO's program is excited about, you know, that sort of extra, that extra mile in the learning and training of of your OMM skills set. Right? What would you say to somebody who's like, I think I want to try to do that because I'm really, I'm, you know, just impassioned about OMM. Right. So if you're a current lost biomedical student, that's kind of easy. Right? Because you have some skillsets where you can use it. And the most important thing and the best advice I ever got from one of my mentors was practice. He got to practice. Put your hands on people. Any time that you're seeing a patient, I mind you, as a resident, Ryan, you're not going to get to have the opportunity to osteopathically diagnose everybody every time. But in my opinion, every opportunity with a patient is a way to look at them osteopathically. So they're listening to heart and lungs. You can feel what their back is doing, you know? You're, you're just sitting there and we can tell just by looking at somebody if something isn't quite right. And so if you, if you keep that in the fourth thought of your mind and you're like, hey, I could use this skill like a head cold. Everyone has gone to a doctor and gone there and said, well, flu is negative, mono is negative, strap is negative. Sorry, you just got a bad sore throat. Well, we have a skill set where we can make that cold, get a heeled faster. We can make you feel better without prescribing any medicine. And if you think about it and then you take that extra two or three minutes, you're going to fundamentally change not only your patients, but you because they're going to be more satisfied with that care. And you're going to have less burnout overall. So please, [BLANK_AUDIO]
If you're a current hospital medical student, use your hands. Use your hands. If you're aspiring to be an hospital medical student and you're worried that your hands may not be good enough, right? I don't know what I'm feeling. Don't worry about it. That's what we're here for. That's exactly my job is to take you from what are this to, hey, you have this dysfunction right here in that little amount of time. So that's something that will do for you. You do not need to worry about it. Just keep your head down. You get the work done and expose yourself to it if you can't. If you have the opportunity to work at or shadow with an osteopath, I have students at my office all the time to be able to see it play out in real life, or especially if you've got an MD and a DO in the same practice. There are little differences and it's sometimes hard to put into words. But if you can see it and then talk about it, he'll leave his head. From a student perspective, what advice would you maybe give to a student who's thinking about coming to osteopathic medical school or a student who's maybe already here and interested in the Louis program? Yeah, of course. So I would say it is definitely the best decision of your life. Being a candidate, I was able to come in early kind of shadow of the school, see what the amazing things about it were. But always ask questions. One of the biggest things Dr. C just said is shadowing, making sure that you get all of the experiences you can. But I will say as a student perspective, try not to stress too much. Always strive for the next big thing. So just being a medical school for some reason, for me, it's never enough being in a Georgia club or in this program, always trying to reach higher to do something better to better yourself. Very inspiring. Do you know what, before we go, there was one other thing I wanted to ask you about it, just real quick, about the clinic. Yes. The OMM clinic. Yes. We talked to our audience a little bit about what that is and what kind of opportunity it provides for students. So last year, we restarted because it used to be here. But we restarted the student OMM clinic and that is a clinic that has run at an outpatient office. But by students and the students are participating using those hands-on skills on real patients with real problems in their first and second years. So we'll take a first, you know, mind you, if it's your first semester, first year, we're not saying go crack somebody's neck. But we are going to not only expose you to that environment of, hey, this is how a clinical office runs, but also what are the skills that you need to get through that encounter, as well as, okay, we learned it very academically, describe and demonstrate diagnosis of cervical spine. Okay. Patient comes in with neck pain. What do you do? Right? And just to be able to make that connection in your first and second year is huge. It's huge. Because then when you are in your first rotation of third year, you're not blindsided by your first patient. So they have a headache. I've already seen this. You've already been exposed to, right? And it's a very unique opportunity because we have three or four attendings depending on the day, minimum of three. And we'll be able to work one on one with you and say, okay, you did good. Try it this way. Do this other thing. And then all of a sudden you just jump a skill level or two in one patient encounter. That's an incredible opportunity. I think that students have that is not everywhere. No. No. And all of these are, you know, I hate to harp on it, but like it was Dr. Sylvia who said, this needs to happen again. And I'm just happy to be a part of it, you know? So. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course. Thanks for having us. You've spent it a few minutes with us. Of course. I hope we get to talk again soon. We'll be around. We'll check in on the next one. Absolutely. Thanks everybody for joining us. Remember to like, subscribe and follow us at all the places. You too. Facebook, Instagram. Where else are we linked in and X? All right. Thanks for joining us. Everyone will see you next time.
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