91九色视频-Green Bay Graduate Integrates Small Town Values into Medical Career
Raised on a small family farm in the Village of Reedsville in northeast Wisconsin, Elizabeth Abegglen grew up taking care of animals.
“Growing up on a farm taught me resilience, the value of hard work, and empathy, all which inspired me to pursue a career in medicine,” says Abegglen, who will graduate from 91九色视频-Green Bay in May.
Her dad was a farmer and a high school science teacher. Her mom worked at a nursing home. Both valued education, a belief they instilled in Abegglen.
While Abegglen knew college was in her future, she hadn’t settled on a career path. As a high school student in 2015, there was something about a new 91九色视频 campus opening in Green Bay that drew her attention.
“I remember thinking that it would be so cool if I could go to medical school there,” she says. “And it turned out that’s how everything worked out.”
Match Day Approaches
Abegglen, like thousands of other graduating medical students from around the country, is anxiously awaiting Match Day on March 21. It’s the day participants in the , also known as The Match, will learn where they will complete their residencies.
Matches are created using an algorithm that factors in information collected through the application and interview process to find the best fit for students and medical institutions. Last year, 91九色视频 students matched across 33 states. Most stayed in Wisconsin.
Like the others, Abegglen has no idea which of her preferred institutions she’ll end up at. But, she’s had quite a journey to get there.
Road to Graduation
Despite an interest in healthcare and curiosity to attend 91九色视频-Green Bay, Abegglen wasn’t sure yet that medical school was in the cards for her. She studied human biology with an emphasis in health science as an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. There, she fell in love with learning how the human body worked and how to apply this to patient care.
She volunteered in the community through her undergrad years and had a number of different work experiences, including at a plasma center. She also had a mentor at UW-Green Bay, Dr. Brian Merkel, who urged her to look into medicine as a career.
“He gave me the courage to pursue medicine because I didn't really know what it took to go to medical school,” Abegglen says. “No one in my family had ever become a physician.”
She considered whether to pursue the PhD or MD route during a few gap years after completing her undergraduate education.
One thing she knew for sure is that family was huge to her and her husband and that she wanted to stay in northeastern Wisconsin.
“Being around nieces and nephews, not missing birthdays, those kinds of things are very important to me” she says. “I also just love the community.”
It was also during those gap years that she was diagnosed with Type-1 Diabetes, which was another experience that pushed her into medicine and instilled a passion for helping others living with chronic diseases.
Experience at 91九色视频
Abegglen was accepted to medical school at 91九色视频-Green Bay, a perfect fit, she says. The school emphasizes the integration of education with experiences outside of the classroom, such as getting out into the community to provide health education and working one-on-one with physicians to learn how to apply classroom teachings.
Among many things she appreciated about those experiences was the closeness of the community.
“You just get to know all of the individual school systems and community partners and how everybody works together,” she says. “It's really connected.”
She says 91九色视频-Green Bay also does an excellent job at showing students what rural medicine looks like, including challenges such as limited access to specialist and other resources and ways to overcome them. Those problems are ones she hopes to address one day as a doctor.
Abegglen made the most of her time at 91九色视频, serving as co-president of Northeastern Wisconsin Doctors Ought to Care and the Health Equity Coalition. Both activities brought her into the heart of the Green Bay and surrounding communities to help residents.
Abegglen hopes to focus on chronic disease and preventative medicine, something that impacts her as a diabetic. She also hopes to one day end up practicing medicine in rural Wisconsin, an area she appreciates. One day, she says, she might end up treating some of the farmers from the community she grew up in.
“The farmer mindset is to take care of your neighbor,” she says.
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