CLEVELAND — Residents at MetroHealth are looking to pave the way for future classes as the first group in the hospital’s new surgical program.
What You Need To Know
- There are 15 residents in the program
- The program started July 1
- The program is diverse with half of the residents being women and 75% being people of color
Since she was a little girl, Hemasat Alkhatib wanted to be a surgeon.
"There's no doctors in my family, but for some reason, I used to watch open heart videos," said Alkhatib. "I used to open up youtube and just research surgery and I would be mesmerized by the human body."
Alkhatib is now a third-year general surgeon resident at MetroHealth Medical Center.
"When you come to Metro, what you learn you retain, because they let you learn hands-on with proper supervision," Alkhatib said.
Alkhatib is one of 15 students who make up the first cohort of MetroHealth's new surgical residency program.
"All of the attendings and the staff are really unified around serving the community and doing what's best for the patients regardless of what it takes," said Theresa Relation, a resident.
Diversity is what makes this class unique. Half the group is made up of women, which is not common in the male-dominated field. Also, 75% of the residents are people of color.
"Coming here, having people who look like me, who are used to essentially being the minority and, like, you build the relationships off that. We have similar experiences," Dajah Chase. "We can talk about oh, this happened to me, this happened to me and we build a relationship based off of that."
MetroHealth hopes the students in this first class will set the tone for the program's future.