Faculty Member Contacts

Adult Neurology

Michael Wang
Clinical Associate Professor
wangm@neurology.unc.edu

Ana Felix
Associate Professor
anafelix@med.unc.edu

Pediatric Neurology

Diana Cejas
Assistant Professor
Diana.Cejas@cidd.unc.edu

FAQs/Course Recommendations/Additional Info

How do students get assigned a career goal advisor?
Any student who is interested in neurology can reach out to any of the three career goal advisors in Neurology, and we become the student’s career goal advisor.

What should my Individualization Phase look like?
Schedule one Neurology AI relatively early on in Individualization Phase (i.e. before August).�� Additional Neurology rotations are optional
Recommended Courses:
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Do all my rotations need to be in Neurology?
No��

Should I do an away rotation?�� What in?
Up to you.�� If you want to get into a specific Neurology residency program, it might help.�� But it is no required by any means.

Do I need a rotation at ������ if I spent my time in Charlotte/Asheville/Wilmington?
It would be ideal to do a Neurology AI, which is only offered at ������.

When do I need to meet with my career goal advisor?�� How do I prepare?
Ideally, you would meet with your career goal advisor late in Application Phase or early in Individualization Phase to make sure that we have a good game plan for the residency application process.

How many letters of recommendation do I need?�� From whom should I get them?
Typically, three letters total.�� One will likely be from the Neurology AI course director.�� Another should be from a Neurology attending that you worked with.�� The last letter can be from anyone.

When do I ask for my letters?�� What do they need?
Ideally, you should ask for a letter soon after you worked with the letter writer.�� You should be prepared to give a copy of your CV and a rough draft of a personal statement.

How do I determine the best programs I should apply to?
Talk to your career goal advisor.�� Talk to Neurology attendings that you work with.�� Talk to the Neurology residents that you work with.

I just got this great piece of news…do I need to notify programs
It does not usually make a difference with most programs.

My LORs aren’t in, and ERAS just opened!
That is okay, just get everything else uploaded into ERAS as soon as it opens.�� And then a gentle reminder to your letter writers that you need those letters ASAP.

I am waitlisted for an interview at X and I’d really like to see that program.�� What do I do?
You could try to e-mail the program director directly and convey why you are interested in that particular program.

I didn’t get an interview at X program.�� Should I send them a “letter of intent”?
Probably won’t make much of a difference.

Should I send thank you letters to programs?
You can, but it doesn’t really make any difference.

Should I send a letter to the program I am planning to rank #1?
You can, but it doesn’t really make any difference.

How do I respond if a program reaches out to me after my interview?
Be polite but take it all with a grain of salt.�� Don’t let it influence your overall decision.

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Milan Terzic – University of Belgrade (Serbia)

MEDI 407 – Digestive Diseases and Nutrition

������ has been a very memorable and educational experience. As many students know before applying to ������, it is a respected institution in the US. Personally, I chose ������ due to my interest in Gastroenterology and Hepatology, knowing that the institution houses world renowned physicians in the field. I was eager to learn from them to keep adding to my ever-growing knowledge base.

The first couple of days were difficult, predominantly due to navigating through the halls and corridors of the multiple hospitals. This was definitely time consuming at first although all medical staff were always willing to help give directions, which ties into ������’s helpful atmosphere. Adapting to the American medical system is something future student should be prepared for. The disparity will be evident in the first couple of days, and this is something all students should be prepared for. In addition to this never hesitate to ask if uncertain. Learning should be the number one priority.

The Gastroenterology and Hepatology elective itself was quite the experience. The attendings and fellows always had time for questions, regardless of their incredibly busy schedules, and are encouraging you to take on more responsibilities as a medical student. This includes seeing multiple patients, evaluating them and forming a plan. In addition to the patient exposure, students are encouraged to prepare seminars on important topics of interest, as well as digging through the primary literature for difficult cases – something very often seen at ������.

Noting all of this, ������ has been a delightful and worthy experience for the last month. I’m very happy to have been involved in the elective itself and be an important member in the management of patients. I cannot be more thankful to all the staff which made every day a pleasure. ������ has taught me very important things that will aid to the development of becoming a great physician. Some of these pearls include being more detail oriented, confident, and learning to categorize multiple problems into basic groups. Make the best of it!

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Christina Lara Klatt – Ruhr University Bochum (Germany)

MEDI 408 – Hematology/Coagulation Consults

MEDI 449 – Critical Care Medicine

Tell us about your elective experience at ������.

Looking back at my time at ������, I am absolutely stunned about how much I have learned during my time! I am glad having had this extraordinary experience. In total I spent two months here, the first was in the benign hematology department, the second at the medical ICU.

What does a typical day look like for you?

During my first month, I did benign hematology, which was a consult service. Officially, my days started at 8.30am, but I tried to come earlier trying to check on my patients. Twice a week, a seminar for the heme-onc fellows took place, which I gladly joined because it was so educational. Before midday, I was given consults, went through the patient’s labs (heme is mostly labs) and went to see them in person. If my schedule allowed to do so, I attended noon-conferences, not only for the food, but primarily for the outstanding lectures. In the afternoon, the attending joined us. Then we presented and discussed our patients. The attending would usually tell witty and interesting stories with regard to our cases. Then the rounding began that could take a while given that our patients were scattered all over the hospital. Frequently, we went to examine bone marrow biopsies or peripheral blood smears. Depending on the day, I either managed to write consult notes before rounding or after.

What do you like about your elective experience at ������?

Many aspects! What I liked the most was that I had a chance to transform my “book knowledge” to clinical knowledge. Back home, we are not much exposed to patients. Of course, we take histories and physical exams, but these patients are often pre-selected. That means that they usually suffer from an isolated condition and are otherwise healthy, their course of the disease is very textbook-ish. Whereas here, the patients have it all, multiple illnesses at the same time and you have to figure out how to filter. What is important? What is still considered normal, while which change is worrisome? I really enjoyed applying the information I have gathered over the years to real cases.

Being German, we are not particularly known to be the most embracing of all people. People are not unfriendly, but not friendly either. In contrast, in the US everyone is super nice and open, engaging in small talk all the time. Despite the frequent rotations at the hospital, the new interprofessional teams immediately work together as if they would have been colleagues for years.

Did you face any challenges?

Especially my first rotation in the US was rather challenging, at least initially. Not being a native speaker nor studying at a med school, where English would be the educational language, I firstly had to acquire the necessary medical English vocabulary. Furthermore, doctors use an excessive abundance of abbreviations! Like soooo many! On my phone I was constantly googling “medical abbreviation …”. Admittedly, once you are privy to that secret language they come really handy and safe you bunch of time.

Do you have advice for future students?

I can only speak for myself, but I came to ������ in order to gain as much medical knowledge as possible. Within a few months, I am going to be a doctor myself and be responsible for my own patients, hence I want to be prepared in the best possible way. Take initiative! The doctors are glad to share their knowledge with you, therefore ask them as much as possible, ask for patients. Besides, ������ offers so many lectures and conferences. Attend them whenever you can, even though they might take place before your scheduled working hours. Lastly, uptodate is your friend, especially the tables.

When you weren’t working, what did you do?

I formed strong friendships with other international students and got to know about their cultures and medical system. Together we visited much of North Carolina and Washington DC. It was tempting to stay at home on my days off and recharge from the busy week, but my drive was to make it a wholesome experience. I wanted to see more than the hospital and also engage in American culture.

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Pranav Balakrishnan – Kasturba Medical College Manipal (India)

SURY 420 – Acting Internship in Cardiothoracic Surgery

SURY 481 – Acting Internship in Surgical Oncology

Tell us about your two rotations at ������.

I have done a few electives before ������, but I feel like this was definitely the most comprehensive and well-planned program. I did electives in cardiothoracic surgery and surgical oncology and both were different experiences, with clear guidelines on the learning objectives for each rotation and included interactions with multiple attendings. This could work in your favor or against. Being an international student, I know it’s important to network. And if your interactions are limited to only 2-3 days, they are not adequate for attendings to form an impression of you; but I think I feel like if you work hard enough, they will definitely recognize it and help you achieve your goals for the duration of your elective and further.

I found some great mentors here who graciously took me on for research after my 2 months of electives. This has been eye-opening and insightful because I haven’t had a too many mentors who could help me with research. And here in this elective, I am getting trained on how the system actually works and how to approach a problem and work your way towards solving it. I have also met some attendings who have been helping me figure out how to apply for my general surgery residency program. There’s a misconception pretty much everywhere outside of America that getting a surgery program in America is close to impossible. It’s reassuring to have heard multiple times here to the contrary. “If you work hard and have your scores and you’ve been putting in time for research and extracurricular activities it will work out.”

What was the best part of your experience?

The thoracic team flew me out with them to harvest a lung for a transplant. That’s something I’ve never experienced before. Just being a part of a transplant surgery in itself is incredible for someone who is looking to do surgery. Being on the team that goes out and brings back the lung changes your opinion of how things work and what you want to do. It makes the hours put in absolutely worth it.

What is your research?

Connected to Transplantation procurement, we are working on Procurement outcomes and comparing resident and attending procurement to understand how the two systems are doing. ������ is one of the few places that sends out resident trainees also to do the procurement.

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Khushboo Agarwal – Kasturba Medical College Manipal (India)

MEDI 413 – Nephrology

MEDI 407 – Digestive Diseases and Nutrition

My usual day would begin around 7:30 am with pre-rounding on my patients and chart review followed by presentation on rounds and submitting patient note on EPIC. I would typically see 1 or 2 new patients every day and follow up on my other inpatients. Even though the rotations were in internal medicine sub-specialties and the consults were about one aspect, my team would take time to discuss the broader medical picture. This way I learnt about a variety of medical conditions from a clinical aspect. The complexity of medical conditions each patient came with was a lot more than I was used to seeing as a medical student back home and to be honest it was both engaging and intimidating at the outset. My fellows and attendings were very friendly and with consistent feedback from them, I gradually learnt to break down complex situations and put the pieces together in a lucid way.

One of the other major learning aspects was communicating effectively with patients and their families. After observing my fellows in the first week, I had the nerve-racking opportunity to lead the discussion with a patient and their family about the patient’s chronic diarrhea and what we were going to do about it. To be able to pick up these aspects of patient care which are rather less taught in medical school was truly gratifying. Nephrology rotation had the unique aspect where I got to do the sediment analysis on all my patients and could co-relate the findings with the medical picture.

The elective experiences have made me very confident in terms of being able to gather the relevant data specific to a patient, present the same in a comprehensive manner and communicate effectively with my patients and their families. There’s so much we get to learn about each patient. To be able to narrow it down, as pertinent, correlate with the labs, imaging and eventually come up with a precise plan is an art which I have enjoyed learning by doing. The emphasis on evidence-based medicine which I witnessed on a daily basis, piqued my interest to research even trivial new concepts, new presentations or changes in a patient’s progress.

There is so much medicine and beyond that every patient has to offer. You just have to be there with an open mind to learn. I would advise to apply early so one can have paperwork in place as visa can take time. Chapel Hill is such a beautiful place to explore with such a variety of food options. Come here, enjoy your time and enjoy learning!

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Amrin Kharawala – Medical College Baroda (India)

MEDI 413 – Nephrology

I am a medical student from India and I rotated in the Nephrology department. I found it a very wholesome experience. Along with consults, I got to see the dialysis unit and how hemodialysis works. I also got to spend time in the Transplant and Fellow’s clinic. Apart from that, this experience allowed me to attend the morning reports and noon conference with Internal Medicine and hence gain insight into the activity of IM residents.

My advice to future students would be: take initiative. You need to be active, ask questions, ask for consults, offer to write patient notes and that way, you will have a more fulfilling experience. The Nephrology team loves to teach and I got to learn clinical stuff as in how to dose anti-hypertensive medications and calculate free water deficit and manage the actual treatment of patients with hypernatremia. They even took informal lectures for students and we got to attend Nephrology conferences, grand rounds and pathology conference that enhanced our learning experience.

The rotation is not very hectic and we get enough time to interact with patients and then read up more about their pathology.

What was different about the rotation: Nephrologists love urine! And they love to spin the urine and diagnose urine sediments. By the end of my rotation, I could independently identify various casts and crystals in the urine sediment.

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Vasudha Sharma – Dayanand Medical College & Hospital

PSYY 403 – Child Psychiatry

Tell us about your elective experience at ������.

The best thing I found after coming here was observing the contrast between India vs. in the United States. Identifying the stressors here. For example, I am working with children and adolescents, so bullying was a concern that we did not commonly see back in India. Also broken families, that is another thing which was more common in US. Additionally, how we can give your patients so much time here. It is so overpopulated in India that you cannot build rapport with your patients to this extent. But here, doing that was the best part of my elective. My favorite part was talking to the kids, interacting with them. Asking them what they like, what they don’t like, that had to be my favorite part. Kids are so interesting! I’m meeting so many different children, an introvert, and extrovert, someone with depression, someone with other issues. It was both sad and heartbreaking, as well as interesting. The heartbreaking part was that sometimes you just want to pick them up from their current environment place and put them in a different environment, but you just can’t just do that.

Do you have advice for future students?

I would just say that future students should try and participate in everything. My elective was inpatient, but I asked my elective coordinator if I could come in on the weekends as I wanted to see what that was like. I wanted to visit the outpatient clinics, to learn how Americans engage in a clinic environment and how the work environment is like. Also, keep asking for feedback, I asked after every week. I wanted to know what to do better for the next week. Try to do everything, try to experience how to write notes, how to interview patients, how to conduct family meetings. Never feel shy; never think you can’t do this task. Say what you want to say, ask what you want to ask, and it actually helps you learn more. You could be wrong, but you will learn more. This experience has definitely added to my career goals because I want to go into psychiatry eventually. If I want to do residency in the United States, I need to understand the work environment here.

What did you think about ������?

������ stands out because you are the most caring people ever! The guidebook for preparation was very nice. There are free buses which is very helpful! I haven’t faced any major challenges. If anything came up, I talked to my attendings, fellows and 1st year residents. Everyone is really wonderful; they have treated me really nice. They made me feel at home. I am very talkative, so I would interact a lot with them and have developed many great relationships which I’ll cherish forever.

When you weren’t working, what did you do?

I formed strong friendship with other international students rotating in other departments. Over the long weekend, we went to Asheville – it was so much fun! This past weekend, we started with a church mass, then we went to a Sikh temple and had free community lunch (langar) there. And then we went to a Chinese New Year’s celebration where we learned how to do calligraphy, made Chinese lanterns, and even danced with them. We did a lot!

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Sowmya Kruttiventi – Coimbatore Medical College (India)

PEDS 445 – Pediatric Gastroenterology

What do you like about your elective experience at ������?
I chose this elective because I have always been clear that I am interested in Pediatrics. I wasn’t too sure about what Pediatric GI would be like. Honestly, I was a little concerned that, as a subspecialty, it would be very in-depth and above my pay grade. But, as it turns out, Pediatric GI actually deals with a lot of common problems that kids present with. It is a very nice primer if you want to go into general pediatrics. I also like the fact that this is mostly an outpatient rotation. I enjoy working in the clinics. It gives me the opportunity to see many different kinds of patients and interact with a lot of people. I also love how hands-on this elective is. The clinics are super busy, which translates to more learning opportunities. I had the chance to work in the Raleigh clinic as well, which was a really good experience. The attendings devote a great deal of time to teaching and answering my questions, so I feel like I am constantly learning something new. That’s always a good thing!

What does a typical day look like for you?
As I mentioned, I spend most of my time in the clinics. I also make sure to attend the Resident conferences. I generally start off my day by going to Morning Report, which is usually a case presentation and discussion. The residents always make it witty and interesting, so this is a great way to start the day! They also have a daily noon conference, and Grand Rounds every Thursday. I spend mornings and afternoons in clinic. I always have fun seeing new patients. Note-writing is also something that I really enjoy. The attendings also let me tag along when they are seeing their patients. I really appreciate how the attendings take time to go through the note with me and give me feedback then and there. I also join the team for rounds for a few days in the week, so this is good opportunity to learn how the inpatient service runs. I always end up learning a bunch of new things. Rounds are usually followed by a teaching session by one of the fellows. The environment at ������ is very focused on teaching, and this is something that I have really come to appreciate and look forward to.

Did you face any challenges?
Well, I wouldn’t call it a challenge, but something I have had to get used to is EPIC. Electronic medical records are just starting to catch on in India. EPIC definitely makes everyone’s life easier, but it just takes a little time to learn. I was pretty nervous about using EPIC at first, but I think I figured it out!

Do you have advice for future students?
Don’t stress about it too much. Don’t spend too much time with your head buried in a book. Knowing things is good, but you always learn more when you interact with patients. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, because everyone is super nice! Also, presentations are a great way to learn new stuff. Chances are, you’ll probably be required to do some. But if not, it’s always nice to volunteer to present something. Enjoy the entire experience as well, because Chapel Hill is a lovely town!

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