Linette - Diversity and Inclusion at MGH (2021-2022)

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

My name is Lynette boscastle Perez and I'm an intern in the Internal medicine program here at MGH a little bit about myself, I was born and raised in Puerto rico where I lived until my college graduation from the University of Puerto rico Mayaguez. I then moved to Connecticut to pursue a PhD and an M. D. At Yale. My ultimate goal is to pursue a career as a physician scientist where I'm able to run a basic science lab and also see patients. There were a couple of things that I was looking for in a program When I was applying, number one is a Latina woman. I wanted to make sure that I ended up at a place that supported minorities and also offered a space uh and opportunity opportunities for us to meet not only minority residents within our program, but also in the MGH residency programs in general. So the Center for Diversity Inclusion is something that offers that for residents here at MGH. Another thing I was looking for was the opportunity to provide patient care in spanish, which is my first language. So here in clinic, I have a very diverse patient panel that I inherited from another resident who uh was also very invested in in offering patient care in spanish in my impatient rotations. I've been able to use my spanish at least once or twice a week. Within my first two weeks of being an intern, I had my first Puerto Rican patient, which was very exciting for me. Then the other thing that I was looking for was a program that was committed to finding the inequalities in health care. MGH noticed that during the Covid 19 pandemic, a lot of the patients that were being admitted with Covid were latin X. So what they did is that they organized a group of spanish speaking physicians in order to provide direct patient care in there in spanish and so the patients feel more comfortable being able to directly communicate with the teams. For me, that was that demonstrate the commitment that the hospital has as a whole to help fight inequalities. So those things were very important for me and it helped me make my decision to come here.