Q&A with Julia U: iBioMed at McMaster University, Shadowing Surgeons & more ⚙️

My name is Julia Ungureanu, my pronouns are she/her. I’m a 4th year student in the Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences (iBioMed) Program at McMaster, specializing in the HESE (Health, Engineering Science and Entrepreneurship) stream. 

What inspired me to go into my program, Integrated Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences (iBioMed), was the blend of technical and creative aspects that the program had to offer. Growing up, I learned how important math was on both sides of my family -- my grandpa was always passionate about the subject and I grew up doing math problems with my dad and grandpa at the kitchen table. My parents are both engineers, and I didn’t know much about what engineering was like. I saw this program, iBioMed at McMaster, and I was intrigued. Our first year was a general engineering year with some extra biology courses, and then afterwards you would specialize in a stream. So, it gave me the opportunity to do all of the sciences and the math that I loved and was good at, to then help me decide what I wanted to do afterwards. 

I’ve also been very artistic all my life, and I didn’t want to forget about this whole other half of me. I was looking for something that also had this artistic aspect to it, and in this program, we have a lot of design courses that allow you to be creative through open-ended problems. I love allowing my mind to do things out of the ordinary, so that’s what inspired me to go into this specific program and I don’t regret it. I feel like I got that need satisfied, and wouldn’t have felt the same satisfaction from a program anywhere else. 

I am interested in applying to dental school, because it feeds into all those things that make me who I am. You need modeling skills to be meticulous, you need a strong technical background, and you need soft skills to be able to take on that human-care aspect to the job. I also like working with people too, and I’ve really had that confirmed with all the group work I have been exposed to in my undergrad -- it feels like me. So ya, I’m going to try my best with dental applications.

When we go into second year HESE (health, engineering science, and entrepreneurship), a stream of iBioMed, we are “trained” to balance those engineering skills with health sciences skills to then bridge a gap between the two, and design a solution that meets the actual needs that exist. We work a lot on creating needs statements, and that’s kind of the basis of the course that we are doing now. 

In my fourth year, we have a course called “Innovators in Scrubs”, where half the year we have hospital placements. These hospital placements were created by the faculty, so we didn’t have to search for them ourselves. We have a professor that organizes all of this and gets in contact with all of the surgeons, and then they pair us up and assign us placement times. This opportunity is unpaid because it’s part of a course, but it counts towards the course credit. Once a week (and that’s even based on how much you want to go), we go into the hospital and throughout the term there are three different streams of surgery that we will shadow. I just finished vascular surgery. This year we are also exposed to neurology and interventional radiology. In our course time (i.e. outside of the hospital), we do background research on all of these different professions and what they do- anything you’d expect to see in an operating room (OR). But, we also get to see what these surgeons are dealing with on a day-to-day basis in the hospital. I feel like that's so important: first of all, it makes you feel like what you are designing in the future has to be good. It makes you want to create something with a purpose, and not aimlessly create something that actually might not even have a meaningful implication in the real world. 

We got these placements, and the point of it is to create opportunities for ourselves too- it’s a place to create connections. The surgeons said to us that we could come in any time that we wanted to, and so my partner and I went in for an extra visit. We would watch from the viewing room, and all of the surgeons would explain the procedures in thorough detail of what they’re doing. You hear about a lot of problems that aren’t really addressed in these operating rooms that you wouldn’t know unless you're there. When you do that initial background research half of what you find online isn’t even addressed; you only learn that once you go and see things. The purpose of this course is that it gets you there, to go and see things to actually see what needs meaningful change. We take notes the whole time while we’re there on problems they mention or problems that we notice, and then we go back to class and work on these need statements. We get the chance to dig deep in our formal reports with primary and secondary research and really break down these problems more and more and more, until you pinpoint the need that you really want to work on. And it's good because you go through this whole iteration process of “ok, i'm coming with these ideas, but will people need this, will people want this?” Since we visit weekly throughout the whole semester, we can follow up with surgeons on the details of our research and ask about any other advice they might have. You know, what solutions might already exist that are already similar to this. Where are the gaps, you know? 

All of the surgeons, even the surgeons that come and go from different areas of speciality, still go to each other’s ORs from time to time. They’ll be like “oh my gosh engineering students, I have xyz problems, I have other things that are unmet and these are problems for our patients, figure something out, go save the world!”. It's honestly very encouraging, this faith they have in us and it makes you want to create something that will actually work. It’s really all of these accomplished people that have reached a peak in their education and they say, “I believe in you” being able to create a solution. Us students, we are like, “wow, someone believes in me, maybe I can really do something meaningful, you know?” So that’s kind of the premise of this course. 

HESE has created a lot of opportunities like this for its students. I’ve had a full year course where we had to create a healthcare related product and figure out how to launch it on the market. You had to analyze all the product approvals that need to be done, all the nitty-gritty things that people don’t really like to get their hands dirty in. We get to tackle all of the business side of things that are super important. I really feel like all of these skills that we acquire will be transferable no matter what any of us choose to do. 

This opportunity is offered by our program and our stream (HESE). We were all guaranteed a spot because it is a mandatory course for all the students in this stream. So there’s no discrimination on who can or can’t participate based on grades or anything- if you’re in the HESE stream, you will do it, and we were all very excited to be a part of this.

I felt like all the surgeons have been super kind and have gone into so much detail explaining all of the procedures that they're performing. Even when you don’t necessarily ask. I'm paired up with a close friend in this process and we were both very cautious in making sure we were not in the surgeon's way either, because these are life-saving procedures- we didn’t want to be in their way or inconvenience them. In reality, we felt valued to be there, and everyone was open to telling us what they believe needs fixing.

I’ve also seen some pretty crazy procedures. I will admit that at the beginning I was a bit squeamish because I was suddenly exposed to something I wouldn't necessarily see in real life on a day to day basis. We did see some pretty invasive procedures, and at first I felt a bit of that fight-or-flight feeling kick in, but I was able to overcome this pretty fast. It does definitely make every week interesting because you’re not just sitting in the classroom- you’re learning through experience. I feel like that’s such a valuable thing to do no matter what you do or where you go. When you experience something, then there's more meaning behind the work you do associated with it. It gives a more powerful purpose to what our final design solutions will be in the next term. We all want to feel good about what our final product is, especially because we are creating something with real connections with these surgeons.

I think our program wants to make some sort of social media associated with the hospital placements that we have. This is the first year since COVID that students have been able to properly go through with this course, and we want to have a social media that can capture exactly what we do - it’s still in the works. 

If you do want to do this, specialize in HESE if you are in the iBioMed Program at McMaster. The HESE program creates these opportunities for people that share similar health related interests as me. 

Ask around to see if you can shadow things that you’re interested in- no matter what you’re doing. It’s definitely very circumstantial, and asking has worked in some situations. Since I’m interested in dentistry, I approached my dentist and asked if I could shadow her. She was very receptive to it, and even now I continue to shadow at her practice frequently. Other dentistry practices however had more strict policies related to Covid, so I am very grateful for the opportunity that was given to me. 

If this sounds like something you’d be interested in and you’re not enrolled in post-secondary education yet, definitely consider researching and applying to the iBioMed program. I think my best advice is to go out and do things because this is how you will learn the most. I feel like you change your mindset when you go and experience something because you learn about yourself, what you like, what you don’t like, and where you can contribute the most with your personal skills. At the end of that day, that’s what matters the most. 

If you are curious to learn more, you can email me at [email protected] or contact me through my LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/juliaungureanu