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Deborah Park (’22) says that when she started medical school, she never anticipated pursuing psychiatry. After graduating in just three years from the University of Illinois at Chicago, she moved to Cleveland to begin her next stage of training. Equipped with a biology degree and a portfolio of award-winning cancer-related research, her sights were set on oncology.
It wasn’t until she reached her third-year rotations that she discovered her passion for psychiatry and realized why she was initially drawn to oncology. “I loved the conversations that I was able to have with cancer patients,” Deborah says. “When patients face a terminal diagnosis, it naturally leads to conversations that are very intimate.” She notes that her psychiatry rotation afforded her the most space to have these types of conversations.
Her desire to help patients with their mental well-being led her to dive into the growing field of psychosocial oncology, a fusion of psychiatry and oncology, for her thesis research. “It’s been rewarding to see how psychiatry touches every field of medicine. My thesis centered on patients with brain tumors and how different treatment modalities affect their quality of life and neurocognitive function,” she says.
On a personal level, Deborah is an avid reader, writer and musician, both on and off campus. She enjoys sitting on the editorial board of Stethos, CCLCM’s medical humanities journal. She served as president of “DocAppella,” an a cappella group for CWRU medical students, and plays music in a band at her local church each week. In addition, one of her most meaningful extracurricular experiences, she says, was being a student preceptor for M1 and M2 communications courses.
To augment her passions for Christian theology and clinical care, she plans to take courses at Westminster Theological Seminary this upcoming January. “I’ve always been drawn to the ways that religion and medicine are intermixed,” she says. “Especially with psychiatry, people may find it difficult to access mental health care because of religious guilt. Mental illness is often mistaken as spiritual failing. Since the intersection between these two topics may not necessarily flow naturally in the clinical setting, it is great to have multifaceted psychiatrists who have informed and nuanced responses to these kinds of barriers.”
Deborah found Cleveland to be a great fit for this chapter of her life. Not only is she grateful for her education at CCLCM, but also for the friends she’s made in recent years. Deborah is the youngest in her class – she turned 21 during her first year of medical school and was able to celebrate with her classmates!
Deborah is also grateful for her supportive mentors at CCLCM. She notes that her research mentor, Erin Murphy, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, was instrumental in inspiring “the perfect mix” of psychiatry, neurology and oncology for her thesis project. Adele Viguera, MD, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, was another influential mentor who helped Deborah to further hone her passion for psychiatry.
Ultimately, Deborah’s fundamental goal is to become a skilled and sympathetic clinician. In the future, she hopes to become a physician investigator who is able to apply her clinical experiences into impactful research to benefit her patients.
