Nine students from OU and surrounding universities are playing doctor this summer.

The students shadowed physicians from an array of medical specialties, following how they diagnose, care for and treat patients as part of the six-week Belknap Memorial Pre-Medical Proctorship program.

The proctorship, founded by Dr. Hal Belknap in 1989, allows undergraduate students the opportunity to experience various disciplines of the practice first hand. After Belknap’s passing in 2008, his widow, JoAnn, and Dr. Brian Yeaman partnered with Norman Regional Health Foundation to continue the program, according to a release.

Participant Ganga Moorthy, microbiology junior, said the opportunity to work with so many physicians first-hand was an unbelievable experience, and it ultimately helped her to realize that working in the medical field is what she wants to do.

“It helped me solidify that I want to do medicine with patient contact,” she said. “Every doctor I was with told me everyone changes their mind in medical school, so I don’t know if it was deciding my specialty. But deciding that medicine is what we [the proctorship students] want to do.”

The students observed 28 physicians and medical professionals from emergency room physicians to family practitioners to surgeons, with each student spending two or three days in each discipline.

“I went in knowing I wanted to do something in pediatrics, but every day I shadowed a different doctor I would change my mind,” Moorthy said. “But I had pediatrics as my last rotation and I realized all the other fields were really cool, but I want to work with kids.”

Students are selected for the program through an application process and are typically sophomores or juniors in college, said Yeaman, chief medical informatics officer at Norman Regional Health Systems.

“It was refreshing to see young people so engaged and excited to start their careers in health care,” he said. “It helps [the doctors] all recognize, despite a lot of change right now, we are still in a wonderful profession.”

For Moorthy, just the experience of learning what kind of doctor she should aspire to be made the entire program worth it. Due to the demanding and sometimes exhaustive nature of the profession, she says that it was nice to see doctors still so passionate about their job.

“It was also a lesson in what kind of doctor we all should be when we become physicians,” she said.