“I don’t know, I just kind of always felt like that’s [medicine] what I was here to do… There was no real ‘Aha’ moment, I just knew that’s what I was going to do.” - Dr. Bouhana
Typically I choose a word to describe the person I interviewed. However, for Dr. Erin Bouhana, I’ve decided upon the phrase: “She means business.” Dr. Bouhana struck me as a woman who accepts no bull-crap and doesn’t mess around when it comes to things that are important to her. Personally, this is a fantastic quality for a person (especially a woman) to withhold, and I applaud her for it. Thankfully, I am able to share her story with you all today.
Dr. Bouhana is a woman who is ½ Caucasian and ½ Middle Eastern. She is an OB/GYN at a practice named Women’s Excellence and delivers babies at Royal Oak, Beaumont. Dr. Bouhana also operates at a surgery center named Michigan Institute of Advanced Surgery.
Dr. Bouhana always wanted to be a doctor. When people asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she always told them she wanted to become a doctor. “And they were like, ‘She’s so cute! She’s so ambitious! Look at her, she’s so cute!’ And I was like, ‘No, really, I’m going to be a doctor.’ And they were like, ‘...Okay.’” Erin explained that it was her life’s calling and there was never really a doubt in her mind that she would eventually become a physician. It was and is her life passion. That ambition propelled her forward to achieve the career she had always hoped to pursue.
For undergrad, Dr. Bouhana attended Michigan State University and was in Lyman Briggs College, which is a residential college on campus (whoo, go green!). There, she majored in Human Biology.
As for medical school, Dr. Bouhana kept her Spartan status and attended Michigan State University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (MSUCOM). At MSUCOM, she bumped into a few obstacles. For starters, she had to really learn how to manage her time. “I mean you know it’s going to be hard, right? People say medical school is hard… But you don’t really know what hard is until you’re doing it.” Dr. Bouhana also described learning how to study effectively as a challenge. “Everyone studies differently; everyone does things differently,” she told me. Throughout her medical school experience, Dr. Bouhana had to cultivate these skills and adapt quickly to medical school.
Dr. Bouhana later went on to do her residency at Metro Health in Wyoming, Michigan, which is right outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan. This residency is now owned by the University of Michigan, so it is now called Metro Health University of Michigan Health. In her last year of residency, Dr. Bouhana had her first kid. (She had her second kid in her second year of being an attending.)
Dr. Bouhana said she didn’t have any direct role-models throughout her medical experience, but if she had to pick somebody, it’d be her dad. Dr. Bouhana’s dad was a dentist. Being around medicine so much growing up helped form her love for medicine and healthcare. However, Dr. Bouhana was not interested in dentistry like her father and also knew she wanted to be in the operating room someday, which was why she chose to be an OB/GYN.
In our conversation, Dr. Bouhana touched on the reality of gender discrimination in medicine. She said she’s experienced it primarily in the operating room. “You’re just not taken as seriously.” Dr. Bouhana described this as unfortunate but said there wasn’t much to be done about it except move forward.
Advice Dr. Bouhana wants to give to pre-med students?:
“It can be done. It’s a lot of work… You can do it but you have to really be dedicated and you have to really want it. Because if you don’t want it and you don’t want it for the right reasons, then it’s going to show and you’re going to have trouble.”
“Just evaluate what you want out of your life. Because it’s a great thing to go into, but if you’re in medical school and residency--essentially if you go right out of undergrad--your 20s are gone, really. I mean you’ve spent it [your 20s] in a classroom, you’ve spent it in a hospital, and so that’s something you have to think about. And you also have to think about if you want a family. That may affect what field you go into because certain residencies are longer, they’re more competitive, they’re not as nice… That’s something you have to think about, too.”
Dr. Bouhana loves being an OB/GYN. She loves taking care of women and working with a younger age group. Dr. Bouhana also loves that her field is incredibly specific, unlike Internal Medicine. She also loves having a mix of being in the OR and in the office because it keeps things interesting. “It’s a different thing every day, it’s not so boring, you’re not in the same place every day.” Dr. Bouhana is a great role-model for prospective OB/GYN’s and also for fellow Spartans. Go Green!
See you all next Sunday!
E.F.
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