There's nothing like gaining experience in the field.
Fatoumata Nogoy Bah had a plan for her senior year of medical school which included finishing the semester, celebrating her graduation, and taking a trip overseas before buckling down to start a residency in July.
It was supposed to be a senior year to remember. In many ways, it still will be, just not in the way she anticipated.
Bah’s plans were thwarted by the coronavirus outbreak.
Instead of the planned experience, the 26-year-old jumped right into volunteering at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, Massachusetts to help diagnose and treat coronavirus victims.
"If you had told me a few months ago that this is what I'd be doing right now, I'd look at you like you were crazy," Bah told Good Morning America adding, "This was just not what we had expected."
Bah’s graduation was held virtually over Zoom on May 31 and a less than a week later, she was on the frontlines battling COVID-19.
"I have a lot of health care providers in my family -- my mom was still working at a nursing home and my sister was still working as a nurse in an emergency department. I felt like I was sitting on the sidelines watching them go in," Bah said. "I really, really wanted to be a part of it, too."
Bah has been assigned to the COVID floor, but she does not see patients physically. She communicates with them via phone and video.
She added that in an effort to minimize the spread of the virus, the hospital is only allowing one doctor to have direct contact with patients.
"A lot of the times it's a normal conversation that you're having with a patient -- they're not feeling well, they're pretty sick and they're just telling you how they're feeling," she said of the patients. "It's just the novelty of the illness [that is different]."
"There's so much unknown about it that a lot of time when they're asking questions, there's a lot that we don't know," Bah revealed. "It's something that wasn't covered before."
Officials also want to keep recent grads safe and COVID-free prior to starting their residencies. Bah will begin hers in anesthesiology this July at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Volunteering directly out of medical school was a brave choice, but Bah has no regrets and believes it will help her in the long-run.
"I feel like I'm finding my purpose and I'm able to help in whatever ways that I can," she said. "If I had chosen to just stay home, I would have been sitting back still thinking, 'What can I do, what can I do?'"
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