The health care industry uses enormous amount of energy and generates a vast amount of waste.  What is going to turn this power-hungry, polluting ship around?

Hopefully the next generation of medical care providers.

If you would like to follow the progress of a new medical student who is focused on community health and greener medical delivery systems, check out my daughter’s new blog, The Green Stethoscope.

Doug, KJ, Della and me at KJ’s White Coat Ceremony.

We recently attended her White Coat Ceremony (see her blog post The Coat You’ll Never Take Off )

KJ is enrolled simultaneously at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and their masters program in public health.  She completed a journalism degree at UW-Madison, heavy in science curriculum and is entering medical school with a very developed environmental awareness.  This summer she took a course in Environmental Medicine for her public health degree and her medical school curriculum includes a section on Health and Society.

It is this mother’s opinion that her journey is going to be well worth following.

Here is a sample post:

AND SO IT BEGINS

In a few short weeks I will begin medical school. I have applied to medical schools, interviewed at medical schools, been accepted to medical schools and even started taking courses for a Masters in Public Health program at a medical school. And in some ways I already think of myself a medical student. But I still haven’t quite crossed the threshold. There is a Grand Canyon of a gap between pre-med and medical student. I have not crossed over (yet). And let me just say, I am so aware of it.

Whether you’re mining this blog for some tips and pointers for the daunting med school application process or curious as to how a carefree twenty-something transmogrifies into the person tapping your knees with a reflex hammer and telling you to say “ah,” let me introduce myself.

Seventh grade biology gave me the chance to dissect frogs and hold cows hearts in my bare (ok, fine, rubber-gloved) hands and from that point on, I was hooked — fascinated by the inner workings of the human body. In high school I set myself on a course to pre-med-dom and eagerly anticipated a lifetime of technical and advanced higher learning and academic and professional accomplishment.  I’ll be the first to admit that I have my Type A tendencies,

When I started college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2006 I was ready to jump right into my carefully planned pre-med track. During Welcome Week, I attended every student org kickoff meeting that sounded remotely interesting, but it wasn’t the premedical honor society that got my toes tapping.

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