Class of 2022 medical students to receive white coats

The University of South Alabama College of Medicine will host its annual White Coat Ceremony at 11 a.m. on Friday, June 19, by Zoom.

During the ceremony, rising third-year medical students in the Class of 2022 will don their white coats, the traditional dress of physicians for more than 100 years.

“I am excited to finally learn the art of doctoring from our highly skilled faculty,” said medical student Zack Aggen. “It feels like I’ve been grinding for two years to get to this point. These next two years will be a thrilling experience.”

Aggen, who is class president, will lead his classmates in the Medical Student Oath via Zoom.

Select students from the class of 2021, along with residents and faculty members, will be inducted into the Gold Humanism Honor Society during the ceremony. Inductees are chosen by current third-year medical students for practicing patient-centered medical care with altruism, integrity and compassion.

Each year, the USA Medical Alumni Association sponsors the event.

MedPride celebrates contributions of Black activists

This month, the members of the MedPride and Allies interest group are sharpening their message for Pride Month, which celebrates the birth of the modern LGBTQ+ movement. In support of Black Lives Matter, they want to emphasize the role that Black activists have played in advocating for LGBTQ+ rights.

“There would absolutely be no Pride Month and nothing to celebrate if it weren’t for LGBTQ+ people of color who were on the front lines at the Stonewall riots,” said Tyler King, co-president of the interest group at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine.

King was referring to the Stonewall rebellion, which took place in New York on June 28, 1969, in which demonstrators fought back against police raids on bars that catered to LGBT patrons. Black transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson, who died in 1992, was among the influential figures who contributed to the riots.

“We want to praise them and make them visible during this really important time in our history,” King said.

MedPride and Allies is spotlighting Johnson and others on its Facebook page, including Audre Lorde, an activist who used poetry and other writings to inspire Black women; Christian Cooper, a gay writer and editor for Marvel Comics and now senior biomedical editor at Health Science Communications; and Lori Lightfoot, who became Chicago’s first Black female and openly LGBTQ+ mayor in 2019.

This week, MedPride is also partnering with the Student National Medical Association, Rainbow Mobile and the Mobile Bevy to raise awareness about Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in Texas more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. MedPride and Allies is hosting an online fundraiser for Black Visions Collective, a Black-led, queer- and transgender-focused nonprofit based in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.

King said that the MedPride and Allies interest group was re-energized at the USA College of Medicine in 2018. With nine officers, it draws 20 to 30 people to its regular meetings. “Our main mission is to provide a safe place and place of togetherness for any LGBTQ+ students that we have in the College of Medicine or in Basic Medical Sciences,” she said. “Secondly, we want to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ health inequities, especially in the South.”

This week also witnessed the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on LBGT rights, in which the court said that existing federal law forbids job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or transgender status. King called the decision “huge” but said there is still more to fight for.

“I’m incredibly grateful for the people who have fought every single day for this,” she said. “We will celebrate this while also realizing we must continue to push for equality and protection of our transgender community.”

Zeidan navigates medical school, family life during pandemic

During her final law school exam in 2007, Melody Zeidan remembers staring out a window, reflecting on her decision to choose a legal career over one in medicine.

“I was pre-law and pre-med during undergrad. I always wanted to be a doctor,” she said, explaining that her father always dreamed of his daughter becoming an attorney.

She graduated from Vanderbilt Law School, passed the bar and spent 10 years working at firms in Birmingham and Mobile. Along the way, she and her husband, Ali Zeidan, welcomed three children into the family. As the years passed, her desire to become a physician remained strong.

While still practicing law, Zeidan returned to college to complete the courses required to apply for medical school. She also took a job working nights as an emergency room scribe at a local hospital. It was during those evening shifts, where she took meticulous notes for physicians, that her decision to change careers was cemented.

A member of the class of 2022 at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, Zeidan picked up a new white coat recently from a local uniform store to unofficially mark the beginning of her clinical duties as a third-year medical student this summer. The jackets of third and fourth-year medical students are differentiated from others by monogramming and a special patch.

“When I decided to go back to medical school, I knew it was going to be a 10-year journey,” she said. “I tell people no decision ever has to be final. Just because you decide to do something with your life doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind.” 

Medical student Melody Zeidan and her three children gather

around the dining room table to complete their schoolwork.

The last few months of her journey, though, have been interrupted by the COVID-19 global pandemic, which closed schools and universities to on-campus learning across the United States. Zeidan worked to complete her second-year studies in the afternoons, evenings and sometimes early mornings so she could be a stand-in school teacher to her children: Bear, age 11; Elle, age 9; and Lex, age 8.

From March until mid-May, her family of five worked exclusively from home, using their dining room as a makeshift classroom and office.

“A lot of my classmates were facing stress over board exams and whether we would be able to start our clinical duties in June as scheduled,” Zeidan said. “But honestly, I was just doing all I could to keep my head above water. I figured I would deal with the future when it arrived.”

Zeidan said her classmates at USA have remained in contact through the GroupMe app. “We have always done most of our class-wide communication through that platform or email.”

Sticking to a schedule at home has helped: “I’ve tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible in such a strange situation, to try to keep our stress levels down. We are all healthy and together. ... It’s a challenge, but we’ll get through it.”

Zeidan grew up in Wilcox County, Alabama. The daughter of a school teacher, her father served on the local school board. She was accepted into the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science (ASMS) her junior year and graduated at age 16. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama, where she also met her husband.

Leaving home and attending the school of math and science in Mobile, she said, changed her life. “It was the best thing my parents ever did for me. It was my first exposure to anything outside of Wilcox County. I got so much encouragement there to learn.”

During certain semesters in high school, she traveled abroad for the first time and fell in love with the theater. Zeidan is already good with a needle, hand-making pageant costumes and more recently cloth face masks in her spare time. She also volunteers with the Junior League of Mobile and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Alabama mentoring program.

Zeidan serves as the research co-chair for USA’s Student Run Free Clinic. She’s also the finance chair-elect for the International Society of Student Run Free Clinics.  She serves as the vice president of the Medical Spanish Interest Group and community service chair of the American Medical Women’s Association.

Zeidan said she’s interested in plastic surgery but keeping her options open: “The focus on both form and function in plastic surgery speaks to my creative side, and I think I would really enjoy doing reconstruction after traumatic injuries or cleft lip/palate repair. It’s still pretty early, though, so all I know for sure at this point is that I want to do a lot of procedures.”

Cardiology grand rounds to discuss coronary anomalies

Sarina Sachdev, M.D., a fellow in the Division of Cardiology at USA Health University Hospital, will present at the next cardiology grand rounds.

Her lecture, "Coronary Anomalies," is set for 11:30 a.m. Friday, June 12, in the Cardiology Conference Room at University Hospital and available via Zoom.

For more information, contact Angela Hunt at (251) 471-7923 or arhunt@health.southalabama.edu.

Medical students organize events for racial justice

University of South Alabama medical students, faculty and staff take part in the White Coats for Black Lives event at USA Health Children's & Women's Hospital.

Medical students at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine led events in support of racial justice Wednesday, drawing hundreds of fellow students, faculty and staff to solemn demonstrations at USA Health hospitals where they train as future physicians.

“I hope we remember this isn’t just for the sake of taking a picture to say that we held signs saying ‘White Coats for Black Lives,’” said Nkemdi Agwaramgbo, a third-year medical student and a member of the USA chapter of the Student National Medical Association. “I hope that today, June 10, 2020, that we can finally take a stand.”

Students, faculty and staff show their support of racial justice

at USA Health University Hospital. 

Speaking to a crowd of more than 80 people in the courtyard at USA Health Children’s & Women’s Hospital, Agwaramgbo, who is black, wiped tears as he admitted to struggling with standing against racial injustice for fear it would affect his ambitions to become a physician, pursue a fellowship and climb the ladder of academic medicine.

“Even though I do have my own aspirations, I look at the revolutionary men and women who came before me and put their lives on the line and their careers on the line, and I ask myself, ‘How can I be so selfish?’” he said. “I’ve made a decision on where I want to stand in this conversation, where I want to stand in history. It’s going to be never two knees in the dirt, but two feet on the ground with my head held high.”

Separated by social distancing, some participants held signs, and all joined in taking a knee during a moment of silence in honor of George Floyd, the black man killed by Minneapolis police and who galvanized an international movement for racial justice.

“The emotion definitely was palpable,” said Gisella Ward, a second-year medical student from Mobile who has served as an officer of the SNMA chapter. Ward, who holds a master’s degree in public health, said she intends to pursue a career in family medicine.

Participants kneel at the White Coats for Black Lives 

demonstration at USA Health University Hospital.

At USA Health University Hospital, about 100 students, faculty and staff knelt on the helipad for nine minutes in honor of Floyd.

“Every day, we focus on inequities of health, but we recognize now that all those things that influence patient health are much more important, such as inequities in education and economic attainment. Now we’ve had the curtain pulled back on inequities in criminal justice,” said Errol Crook, M.D., professor and Abraham Mitchell chair of internal medicine at the USA College of Medicine.

Crook told the crowd: “As a black man, I could have been George.”

Angela Mosley-Johnson arrived at the event after a day of her clerkship rotation in internal medicine. Next year, the York, Ala., native will become the first physician in her family.

“It is important for us to build a different community where systemic racism and the ways in which it affects the health of communities of color can be openly discussed,” she said. “It’s an important step in improving the communities we serve.”

Ashley Cainion, the outgoing president of the SNMA chapter, agreed that the show of support is significant.

“It may seem small to some people, but it’s a big deal to us,” said Cainion, a third-year medical student from Dothan. “People at all levels at USA Health are coming together to support this. We’re getting this conversation started. That’s how we believe we can start making changes.”

View more photos from the White Coats for Black Lives event on Facebook.