Med School Bid Calls For Some Self-Examination

The oak table was 20 feet long and 5 feet wide and Bill Hall had to sit alone at one end facing his four interrogators.

“I don’t know if I imagined the bright light over my head or not,” Bill says, chuckling.

The Kafka-esque interview in January for admission to the University of Washington’s medical school began with a six-hour wait. His interviewers were unsmiling, brief, humorless. By the time they asked Bill where he wanted to be in 10 years, he desperately wanted to relieve the tension in the room.

“I said, “I certainly hope not in this office interviewing for medical school,”’ he says. “They didn’t laugh.”

Bill is 22 and has wanted to be a doctor for as long as he can remember. He’s just what Idaho needs - someone who wants to practice family medicine in the small towns that always are struggling for doctors.

He’s bright, energetic, easy-going. He graduated from the University of Puget Sound last May with a 3.5 grade point average and scored high on his medical aptitude tests.

But he’s sent applications to 40 medical schools and the rejections are stacking up in his Coeur d’Alene home. Private schools have 10,000 applicants for 100 openings. UW has hundreds of applicants for 16 slots reserved for Idahoans. Last year, Bill finished 19th.

The University of Utah has room for six Idaho students. Bill has interviewed twice at UU and UW. His first interviewers told him he needed more medical experience, so he took a job in clinical research with a Coeur d’Alene rheumatologist.

He began volunteering twice a week at Lake City Health Care, the area’s free clinic, and driving to Bonners Ferry every Friday to work with a family doctor.

A positive interview recently at UU makes up somewhat for the disastrous second interview at UW. But Bill isn’t holding his breath. He’s interviewing at an osteopathic school in Iowa later this month and starting to think about graduate instead of medical school.

“Molecular biology is really neat, in a lot of ways neater than medicine,” he says.

But it won’t fill Idaho’s need for rural doctors.

Close call

Coeur d’Alene’s Elaine Bradshaw was dismayed when her local bank was bought by a bigger bank and she had to call a toll-free number in another state to ask a simple question about her account.

But, Elaine’s friendly and found out the person she reached was in Texas. As they compared weather stories, the teller learned Elaine was from Coeur d’Alene, a place the teller said she knew well. Turned out, she was from Idaho originally - and Elaine felt better about her bank.

Thumbs up

Readers weren’t shy about the death issue Louis raised in this column a week ago. Remember - he wants to be able to choose death after he no longer can lead a useful life?

Thirty people responded right away and 29 agree with Louis. One woman said she’d needed a patient advocate to stop revival attempts after her 98-year-old grandmother’s heart failed.

A 71-year-old Post Falls man, who went through the extended death process with his father, said: “By golly, when I get down, I’ll be looking for some help to get me to marble park.”

A 28-year-old Potlatch woman said she’s watched Alzheimer’s disease slowly drain her father’s independence. “I know I wouldn’t want to be kept alive if I were totally dependent on other people,” she says.

Only one person disagreed. “Voluntarily ending your own life is suicide. There is no dignity in that,” a Coeur d’Alene man said.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: It’s not too late to register your opinion with Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.