Professor brings international med students to PNW summer program
For the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Ernest Talarico assembled an international group of aspiring doctors for a monthlong summer study program.
Talarico, a visiting instructor of Biological Sciences at Purdue University Northwest, has run the program summer program for the better part of a decade, starting it while working at Indiana University Northwest in collaboration with Thach Nguyen, a Merrillville-based cardiologist who also serves as the founding dean and provost at Tan Tao University, an American-style institution in Vietnam’s southern Long An Province. Talarico has also taken a series of trips to Vietnam to share his expertise at several of the country’s medical institutions.
This summer’s cohort, a mixture of medical students and recent graduates, included 16 participants from three countries: 13 from Vietnam, two from the Czech Republic and one from Malaysia. The number would have been higher, Talarico said, but for the hang-ups in the visa process that kept several more prospective attendees from traveling to the United States.
The program allowed participants to use technologies and learning techniques that some might not have been able to access in their home countries, Talarico said, as well as an opportunity to bolster their English language skills.
His cohort worked with digitized cadavers — highly detailed three-dimensional models made by scanning thin slices of donated human remains — which allow students to simulate a dissection. Talarico also led sessions with standardized patients, actors trained to realistically portray the subjective side of different medical conditions in order to help students learn diagnostic techniques.
“The overall goal is for them to build their medical knowledge so that they can apply to it patients whether they’re practicing here in the United States or whether they go back to their own country,” Talarico said.
The program concluded on Friday, when participants gave research presentations on topics ranging from subdural hemorrhages to cervical cancer.
Man Nhu Lam, a fifth year medical student at Tan Tao University, gave her presentation on Wolff-Parkinson White Syndrome, a disorder of the heart’s signaling pathways that can cause potentially fatal episodes of elevated heart rates.
“I want to be unique, so I have to research some topic that sounds strange,” she told the Post-Tribune.
This summer marked Man’s first visit to the United States, She has been staying with her fellow cohort members at a house in Hobart. Hailing from Ho Chi Minh City, a metropolis of nearly 9 million people, Man described the region as “very peaceful” by contrast.
“It’s just like the countryside of Vietnam,” she said.
Man said she is still figuring out what area of medicine most interests her, and whether to pursue a career at home or in the United States. She said that working with Talarico was a valuable experience.
The size of the program has remained roughly unchanged since its inception, Talarico said, but he hopes to be able to include more participants and provide additional resources in the future, including working with real cadavers.
“I’d like to see it expand,” he said. “I’d certainly like to see a hands-on gross anatomy, but as of yet we don’t have actual human cadavers here on campus. We have something in the works for that and hopefully that happens.”
