Student Volunteers at SickKids Gain Real World Insights

Early on in her Grade 11 year, Carys McFarlane became fascinated with her biology course, especially learning how the human body functions, and decided to seek experience working in a hospital setting. She set her sights high and applied in February to volunteer at SickKids. It wasn’t until Closing Day that she received a call for an interview the following week, and she was offered a position as a child life volunteer on the spot.

For the month of August Carys commuted five days a week to work in the Paediatric In-Patient Unit at SickKids from her home in Kleinburg either with one of her parents, who both work downtown, or via public transportation. There she and another volunteer helped to oversee a large part of the seventh floor where young children are admitted for shorter stays for illnesses such as pneumonia, asthma or seizures.

Carys’ role involved befriending and playing with the children – anything to positively distract them and their family members in an effort to make their hospital stay as pleasant as possible. By observing others, she was able to further develop “her bedside manner” – an important quality for all medical professionals. She played games, held babies, and gave parents and older siblings breaks from their bedside duties. Carys was also privy to doctors’ conversations with their patients, opening her eyes and ears to a further understanding of pediatrics.

“The experience really solidified my interest in medicine,” Carys explains. “Working with these kids made me realize that pediatric medicine is the direction I want to pursue.”

Carys has not yet decided exactly where or what she would like to study next year, but is weighing her options, researching pre-med programs at universities in Canada and overseas.

For Alexandra Feldstein, serendipity played a large part in her introduction to Dr. Khosrow Adeli, who spearheads a national initiative called the Canadian Laboratory Initiative on Paediatric Reference Intervals – the CALIPER Project. It was Alexandra’s love of music (she has her Grade 10 piano certification), brought up by her mother in conversation with a stranger, and not her dream of studying pediatric medicine, that opened the door. The “stranger” turned out to be Dr. Adeli’s wife who kindly suggested that Alexandra contact her husband directly about summer volunteer opportunities at SickKids.

Alexandra set about crafting a cover letter and was also able to get three reference letters from CDS teachers in quick fashion. She got an interview right away and was offered a position as one of five volunteer research students for the summer. Since she was enrolled in Summer School, Alexandra was only available for August, but was determined to make up for lost time working alongside two undergraduate students and two graduate students.

The job ranged from administrative tasks and database entry, to attending meetings with SickKids’ doctors and their colleagues from hospitals across the country. A side benefit for Alexandra was the opportunity to devour journal entries published by her colleagues in high-impact medical journals such as Pediatrics and Clinical Biochemistry. “I hope that my name will be there one day,” Alexandra dreams.

Perhaps her favourite aspect of this experience was working with Dr. Adeli’s team on the CALIPER Project. This multi-centre, nation-wide initiative has created a database that serves as a reference point for comparing children’s blood tests, which is hugely important since children’s blood reference intervals are prone to frequent variation. According to the SickKids website, “The CALIPER Project is designed to fill the gaps that currently exist in pediatric reference intervals.”

“It’s about kids helping kids,” explains Alexandra. CALIPER already has more than 8500 samples from healthy kids. The more samples they can gather, the more accurate the reference intervals in the database, which can ultimately help improve the diagnosis of many diseases.

Another highlight was working in the Peter Giligan Centre for Research and Learning Tower on the 21st floor with the other summer students.

“This was a fabulous first step in pediatrics for me,” says Alexandra. She already has plans to return as a research student next summer and plans to apply to McMaster University’s Health Sciences program for admission next September. While SickKids is the main research centre for CALIPER, McMaster’s houses the secondary branch. That is all part of Alexandra’s master plan as she hopes to continue with this project for years to come.